Internet rice information system

This project is a collaborative activity involving a private sector consortium and an international and a national rice research institution recently conducted to validate the design of an internet-based information service (IRIS) that would provide more timely and objective data on rice area and production than the rice statistics collection systems currently practised in most Asian countries. The system consists of two components that make use of geospatial tools including remote sensing, GIS and GPS technologies. The remote sensing component comprises a largely automated protocol using multi-date SAR imagery for mapping and estimating rice area and planting dates.The outputs are fed into a production estimation component comprising a crop growth simulation model, which then predicts harvest dates and crop yield using meteorological data. Starting with historical weather data, the prediction can be succesively updated as real-time weather data are made available. Rice area and yield estimates are summarized by administrative boundaries and are offered through a web-based services to users and subscribers. Pilot testing of the data generation component of the system was carried out in three sites covering 81 municipalities of Nueva Ecija, Isabela and Pangasinan provinces for the DS rice crop of 2003/2004. Acquisition of RADARSAT and ENVISAT ASAR data at various dates througout the rice growing season permitted investigation and evaluation of the capacity of the automated SAR processing system to handle multi-platform data. A field campaign was conducted covering 68 municipalities and 667 geo-referenced survey points to collect ground truth and specific rice cropping information in their fields. Daily weather data were collected from 5 surrounding weather stations for the past 10 years, data for the 2003/2004 seasons were available for 3 stations. Processing of the SAR data provided rice area and planting date estimates, which were fed together with the weather data into the crop model. The predicted yields and rice area are reported by municipality. In Nueva Ecija and Isabela, which are covered by the UPRIIS and MARIIS irrigation schemes, yield data were also collected from the National Irrigation Authority water districts for comparison with the predicted yields. The implications of expanding and operationalizing such an information system for rice is discussed based on the experience from this pilot study.