Weather Data for Canadian Crop Insurance

Intro
Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation provides weather derivative programs that cover pasture and corn crops. These programs are based on precipitation and temperature values during the growing season. Environment Canada, however, provided only 30 official weather stations, which was by far not enough to put every farm within 40 kilometers of a  eligible weather station.

Task
The task was to fill the gaps between weather stations of the met office (Environment Canada), establishing a dense grid of redundant rain gauges, temperature and humidity sensors, and to quality control the data to an extent that would allow the Insurance Company to make this data the sole base for all payment claims.

Solution
Since 2005, Weather INnovations Consulting LP has installed and maintained 101 ADCON Telemetry weather stations across Saskatchewan. All incoming raw data undergoes a rigid quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) process before being submitted to SCIC. This process has been approved by an accredited meteorologist.

At each WIN station there are dual temperature/relative humidity sensors and two tipping bucket rain gauges, measuring 0.2 mm per tip. All data and communication is done through ADCON Telemetry GPRS RTUs with analog to digital conversion, and several days of data storage, with two independent loggers installed at each site for redundancy.

Summary
WIN ensures field services meet crop insurance needs and standards. Quality weather monitoring programs require regular site inspection by trained personnel. The weather stations are routinely inspected and maintained throughout the growing season with in-season station calibration and verifications as well as offseason re-calibrations and all verifications documents completed. WIN’s use of dual temperature sensors, precipitation gauges and ADCON Telemetry datalogger and radios  has nearly eliminated missing values, and created for many years a reliable set of data that both the Insurance company and its clients can fully trust in.

ADCON Products deployed in this project:

• A850 Telemetry Gateway
• A753 addWAVE GPRS
• 540mA Solar Panel
• Adcon RG Pro
• T8 Tensiometer
• Adcon TR-1