The Potential and Uptake of Remote Sensing in Insurance: A Review

Remote Sensing

Jan de Leeuw⁶  Anton Vrieling⁴  Apurba Shee¹  Clement Atzberger³  Kiros M. Hadgu⁸  Chandrashekhar M. Biradar⁹  Humphrey Keah⁵  Calum Turvey⁷  Bingfang Wu² 

[1] International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), P.O. Box 30709-00100 Nairobi, Kenya; E-Mail:;World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), Eastern and Southern African Region, P.O. Box 30677-00100 Nairobi, Kenya; E-Mail;Institute of Surveying, Remote Sensing & Land Information (IVFL), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Peter Jordanstrasse 82, 1190 Vienna, Austria; E-Mail:;Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, P.O. Box 217 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands; E-Mail:;World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), P.O. Box 30677-00100 Nairobi, Kenya; E-Mail:;World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), Eastern and Southern African Region, P.O. Box 30677-00100 Nairobi, Kenya; E-Mail:;Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-7801, USA; E-Mail:;World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF), Eastern and Southern African Region, P.O. Box 5689 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; E-Mail:;International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), P.O. Box 950764 Amman, Jordan; E-Mail:

关键词: insurance;    remote sensing;    index insurance;    agriculture;    flood risk management;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs61110888

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Global insurance markets are vast and diverse, and may offer many opportunities for remote sensing. To date, however, few operational applications of remote sensing for insurance exist. Papers claiming potential application of remote sensing typically stress the technical possibilities, without considering its contribution to customer value for the insured or to the profitability of the insurance industry. Based on a systematic search of available literature, this review investigates the potential and actual support of remote sensing to the insurance industry. The review reveals that research on remote sensing in classical claim-based insurance described in the literature revolve around crop damage and flood and fire risk assessment. Surprisingly, the use of remote sensing in claim-based insurance appears to be instigated by government rather than the insurance industry. In contrast, insurance companies are offering various index insurance products that are based on remote sensing. For example, remotely sensed index insurance for rangelands and livestock are operational, while various applications in crop index insurance are being considered or under development. The paper discusses these differences and concludes that there is particular scope for application of remote sensing by the insurance industry in index insurance because (1) indices can be constructed that correlate well with what is insured; (2) these indices can be delivered at low cost; and (3) it opens up new markets that are not served by claim-based insurance. The paper finally suggests that limited adoption of remote sensing in insurance results from a lack of mutual understanding and calls for greater cooperation between the insurance industry and the remote sensing community.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.