Near Real Time Crop Loss Estimation using
Remote Sensing Observations
Suryakant Sawant Jayantrao Mohite
Tata Consultancy Services Tata Consultancy Services Tata Consultancy Services Tata Consultancy Services
TCS Innovation Labs TCS Innovation Labs TCS Innovation Labs
Mumbai, India Mumbai, India
Email: suryakant.sawant@tcs.com Email: jayant.mohite@tcs.com Email: mariappan.s@tcs.com Email: srinivasu.p@tcs.com
Abstract—Natural calamities triggered by erratic weather
conditions like cyclone, earthquakes, hail storms, and flood incurs
substantial loss to the infrastructure and crops of the region.
Countries across the globe are prone to such natural calamities.
In India, specifically coastal parts are vulnerable to tropical
cyclones. In 2018 east coast districts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh, India were affected by the three cyclones namely Titli
(11 Oct. 2018), Gaja (16 Nov. 2018) and Pethai (17 Dec. 2018)
causing severe damage to seasonal crops such as Rice, Coconut
and Areca Nut plantations. Traditional survey-based methods of
crop loss assessment are time-consuming and labor-intensive.
This study addresses the problem of near-real-time qualitative
crop loss assessment due to tropical Gaja cyclone using the
temporal data from Sentinel 1 and 2 satellites. The crop damage
assessment study has been undertaken for Gaja cyclone in the
affected district of Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India. The major
crops cultivated in the district are Kharif Rice (locally called as
Samba and Late Samba) and Coconut plantations. The study
addresses qualitative loss assessment in terms of crop area
affected. As a first step, we used time series data of Sentinel-
1 (VV and VH backscatter) available between Aug.-Nov. 2018
to map the Kharif rice area. Also, cloud-free Sentinel 2 scenes
available during Mar.-May. 2018 have been used to map the
Coconut area. Field visits were conducted to collect the geo-
tagged plot boundaries for the rice crop and coconut plantations.
The data collected through field visits was used both for model
training and crop loss assessment. Google maps satellite layer was
used as a base map for identification of other non-crop classes
(i.e., forest, water, settlement, etc.). The overall accuracy of crop
area classification was 87.23% for rice and 92.22% for coconut.
Further, to estimate the crop loss, crop layers along with
the NDVI were considered. Two crop loss scenarios, namely
minimum damage and maximum damage, were identified for
both the crops. The mean NDVI composite before the event, i.e.,
1-15 Nov. 2018 was considered as the base. In case of maximum
loss scenario, short term NDVI composite available immediately
after the event, i.e., 17-25 Nov. 2018 was selected. After the
cyclone, long term NDVI composite of the mean (i.e., 17 Nov.-
13 Dec. 2018) was used to assess the minimum loss scenario.
Using field observations, the crop loss was categorized as severe
loss, medium loss, low loss, and no loss. Results showed that the
coconut plantations in Pattukkottai, Peravurani, and Papanasam
blocks of Tanjavur are affected by the cyclone. The significant
rice crop loss has been observed in Thanjavur, Orattanadu,
Pattukkottai blocks. We have found the remote sensing based
crop loss observations are matching with the government reports
based on field observations. The remote sensing observations
978-1-7281-2116-1/19/$31.00 2019
c IEEE
Mariappan Sakkan Srinivasu Pappula
TCS Innovation Labs
Chennai, India Hyderabad, India
with human participatory sensing (i.e., field observations) has
the potential for near-real-time crop loss assessment.
Index Terms—Crop Loss, Remote Sensing, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-
2, Cyclone
I. BACKGROUND AND I NTRODUCTION
With changing weather calamities like cyclone, earthquakes,
hail storms, and flood are occurring at a higher frequency. Such
disasters incur a substantial loss to the society both directly in
terms of fatalities and in terms of damaging the critical infras-
tructure and crops of the region. Countries across the globe
are prone to such natural calamities. Particularly, peninsular
India is prone to various extreme events such as cyclones,
flood, hailstorm, and drought. Indian agriculture is severely
affected by such circumstances in the past. About 60% of
the landmass is prone to earthquakes of various intensities;
over 40 million hectares is prone to floods; approximately
8% of the area is prone to cyclones, and 68% of the area is
susceptible to drought. In the decade 1990-2000, about 4344
People lost their lives, and 30 million people were affected
by disasters every year. India’s long coastline of 7,516 km is
exposed to nearly (10%) of the world’s Tropical cyclones. It
makes about 8% of the land in India vulnerable to cyclones [1].
In India, Tropical cyclones occur in the months of May-June
and October-November. On an average, five to six tropical
cyclones form every year, of which two or three could be
severe. An analysis showed that during 1891 and 1990 on a
50 km wide strip on the east coast, 262 cyclones occurred
(of which 92 were severe). In comparison, on the west coast
33 cyclones occurred, out of which 19 of these were severe.
Most casualties occur due to coastal inundation by tidal waves
and storm surges. On the east coast, cyclones typically strike
the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil
Nadu, along the Bay of Bengal [2].
In 2018 east coast districts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh, India were affected by the three cyclones namely
Titli (11 Oct. 2018), Gaja (16 Nov. 2018) and Pethai (17
Dec. 2018) causing severe damage to seasonal crops such as
Rice, Coconut and Areca nut plantations. There are various
ways to monitor and assess the cyclone and damage caused
by it. Earlier methods of manual surveys to assess the crop
damage are time-consuming and resource-intensive. Often
post-disaster much of the affected areas remain secluded,
thereby limiting the field visits for damage assessment. The
information on crop damage assessment is immediate ask of
the stakeholders from the public and private sector. The key
players are government, crop insurance agencies, agri-lending,
and agri-input suppliers. Remote Sensing in this context plays
an important role. Various Optical and SAR sensors onboard
satellite/drone platforms have been used in the past to monitor
and assess the crop damages caused by the extreme events [3]–
[8]. Boschetti M. [3] developed an approach for pro-active
assessment of crop status due to Typhoon Haiyan in Leyte,
Philippines using the data from SAR and MODIS sensors.
Reddy V.C. [5] developed a method to identify and quantify
the damage to agricultural biomass caused by Hudhud cyclone
using pre and post event images of Landsat-8. Prabhakar M.
[6] demonstrated the use the IRS-LISS 4 data for hailstorm
damage assessment. NDVI difference between pre and post
hailstorm event was used as an indicator for damage assess-
ment. Hu T. [4] used the Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 observations
for vegetation damage assessment due to Hurricane Maria in
Dominica and Puerto Rico. NDVI status of the current year
after the event was compared with the previous two years and
used as a proxy for damage assessment. The main objective of
the study is near real-time crop damage assessment in cyclone
hit region using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 observations. The
study has been carried out in one of the Gaja cyclone affected
districts from Tamil Nadu, India viz. Thanjavur during Samba
2018 rice season.
II. M ATERIALS AND M ETHODS
A. Study Area
The study has been carried out Thanjavur district of Tamil
Nadu, India. The district lies in the East Coast of Tamil Nadu
between and of the northern latitude and and of the Eastern
longitude [9]. Its a first district of the Cauvery delta with 70
percent of the population is engaged in Agriculture and allied
activities for their livelihood. The district has a geographical
area of 3.39 lakh hectare (ha.) with a gross cropped area
of around 2.69 lakh ha. [10] The major crops cultivated
in the district are Paddy, Coconut, Pulses, Gingelly, Cotton,
Groundnut and Sugarcane. The district is also called as Rice
Bowl of Tamil Nadu. Rice is cultivated in three seasons viz.
Kuruvai, Samba, and Thaladi. The district is one of the largest
producers of Coconut and other major horticulture crops are
Mango, Banana, and Guava [9].
B. Datasets used in the study
The proposed methodology for near-real-time crop loss
assessment is based on remote sensing observations from
Sentinel 1 and 2 satellites. The field observations on crop
damage severity is collected using the application on the
smartphone device. This section explains the data sources and
pre-processing followed in the proposed methodology.
Sentinel-1 Observations: The ESA launched the Sentinel-1
satellite under Copernicus Programme satellite constellation.
Fig. 1. Study Area
The Sentinel-1 mission comprises a constellation of two polar-
orbiting satellites (Sentinel 1A and 1B), operating day and
night performing C-band Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR)
imaging, enabling them to acquire imagery regardless of the
weather aberration. The Sentinel-1A SAR instrument operates
at 5.405 GHz (C-band corresponding to a RADAR wavelength
of about 5.6 cm), containing VH and VV polarizations with
the revisit cycle of 12 days and a spatial resolution of 5 m by
20 m in the range and azimuth directions, respectively [11].
It has an equivalent number of looks of five, and an image
resolution of 10 meter [12]. We have accessed the Sentinel-1A
and 1B backscatter images from Google Earth Engine (GEE)
platform [13]. The GEE collection includes the S1 Ground
Range Detected (GRD) scenes, calibrated, and ortho-corrected
using the Sentinel-1 Toolbox. Each scene is pre-processed
with Sentinel-1 toolbox for thermal noise removal, radiometric
calibration, and terrain correction. The final terrain corrected
values are transformed to decibels (dB) via log scaling and
quantized to 16 bits. In this study, we have used both VV and
VH polarization. The S-1A and S-1B images available from
Aug. to Nov. 2018 were accessed from GEE datasets and used
for the analysis.
Sentinel-2 Observations: Sentinel-2 is an earth observa-
tion satellite launched by ESA under Copernicus Programme
satellite constellation which captures optical imagery at high
spatial resolution varying from 10 m to 60 m and has con-
tinuous coverage of earth every ten days with one satellite
and five days with two satellites [11]. The data can be used
for various applications such as Land Monitoring studies,
including the monitoring of vegetation, soil and water cover,
as well as observation of inland waterways and coastal areas
[13]. Sentinel-2 images are processed to Level-1C, which
are orthorectified, map-projected images containing top-of-
atmosphere reflectance data. We derived NDVI time series
from the early season cloud free Sentinel-2 scenes for coconut
area mapping and crop loss assessment.
Field Observations: We have designed and developed an
in-house rural participatory sensing based Android mobile
application for field data collection [14]. The plot details
include the geotagged field boundary of the plot. The crop reg-
istration includes the capturing of crop type, variety, method
of cultivation (direct sowing or transplanting) and yield. The
field observations on rice, coconut and other crops also include
the extent of damage caused by the cyclone. Total crop loss
and severity observations for 200 rice and an equal number of
coconut plots were collected using the same application. The
plot boundaries for other land-use classes such as settlements,
waterbodies, forest, bare soil, etc. was created using Google
Earth Engine (GEE) platform.
III. M ATERIALS AND M ETHODS
A. Crop Area Mapping
Rice Area Mapping: The rice area map derived using
operational in-season rice area mapping framework proposed
in our prior work is used in this study [15]. The temporal
rice area maps generated using Sentinel-1 (VV and VH
backscatter) are available between mid-Jun. to Sept. 2018 at
a frequency of 12 days with an overall accuracy of 87.00%.
The main rice cropping season which was affected due to the
cyclone was Samba and Late Samba. The rice area map after
peak crop growth, i.e., Nov. 2018 is used in this study. Fig. 2. Near Real Time Crop Loss Estimation Framework
Coconut Area Mapping: Coconut is a perennial crop, and
hence mapping of the coconut areas can be carried out using
the images available throughout the year. The cloudy weather IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
during a tropical cyclone obstructs the view of the optical
satellite, and it’s hard to get cloud-free scenes. Therefore, we A. Rice and Coconut Area Mapping
have used the cloud free scenes of Sentinel-2 satellite from
Mar.-May 2018 to map coconut plantations. The rice area is estimated using time series of Sentinel-1
available from Aug.-Nov. 2018. We have used a total of 9
B. Crop Loss Assessment images (features used: 9 VV+9VH+slope in %) as input to
We have considered the rice and coconut crop area layers a random forest classifier. The classifier was tested on the
along with the time series of NDVI for crop loss assessment. independent test dataset with the overall accuracy of 87.23 %.
Two crop loss scenarios, namely minimum and maximum Figure 3(A) shows the distribution of rice area in Thanjavur
damage, were identified for both the crops. The mean NDVI district, Tamil Nadu during Samba and Late Samba rice
composite before the event, i.e., 1-15 Nov. 2018 was con- season.
sidered as the base. The maximum crop damage scenario Further, we have carried out Coconut area mapping using
considers a shorter time series of observations that represent Sentinel-2 observations. Total 7 NDVI images available be-
an immediate drop in the crop NDVI soon after the cyclone. tween Mar.-May 2018 were used as feature set for random
Therefore, the short term NDVI composite available immedi- forest classifier. The field observations dataset was divided for
ately after the event, i.e., 17-25 Nov. 2018, was selected. The training and testing in the ratio of 70 % and 30 %, respectively.
vegetation such as plantation and few other annual crops like Results showed the average overall accuracy of 92.22% on the
sugarcane regain vegetation state after a certain time lag. To test dataset. Figure 4(A) shows the extent of coconut area in
consider such behavior of the vegetation, after the cyclone, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu in 2018.
long term NDVI composite of the mean (i.e., 17 Nov.-13 Dec.
2018) was used to assess the minimum loss scenario. The field B. Rice and Coconut Loss Assessment
observations collected using human participatory sensing were
used for categorizing the crop loss. The categories such as The crop loss assessment was estimated using the Sentinel
severe loss, medium loss, low loss, and no loss were identified 2 based NDVI composites of pre and post-cyclone. Figure
and mapped against the NDVI values, and final crop loss maps 3(B) and (C) shows the maximum and minimum loss to the
were generated. rice crop. The significant rice crop loss has been observed in
Overall Framework: Figure 2 shows the overall frame- Thanjavur, Orattanadu, Pattukkottai blocks of Tanjavur district.
work for near real-time qualitative crop loss assessment. As Figure 4(B) and (C) shows maximum and minimum loss to the
discussed in previous sections, we have two level approach, coconut plantations. Results showed that the severely affected
wherein the first level includes the mapping of crop areas and coconut plantations are from Pattukkottai, Peravurani, and
the second level involves loss assessment using crop layers Papanasam blocks of Tanjavur district. These observations are
and NDVI information available pre and post-event. in line with government reports.
 Fig. 3. Rice Area and Loss Assessment Maps for the Study Area
Fig. 4. Coconut Area and Loss Assessment Maps for the Study Area
V. S UMMARY AND C ONCLUSIONS
Quick and timely crop loss assessment is crucial for pub-
lic and private stakeholders from the decision and policy-
making standpoint. Traditional methods based on field survey
are constrained by the time, human resources required, and
accessibility to the affected areas. The time series of satellite
based optical and SAR observations are very effective and
cover large extent with good precision. This study proposed
a methodology for near real-time crop loss assessment using
remote sensing observations. The methodology is evaluated
for qualitative rice and coconut crop loss estimation caused
due to Gaja cyclone in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu
during November 2018. We followed the two-level approach
wherein; the first level involved the estimation of rice and
coconut area using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 observations,
respectively. Further, the second step involved the estimation
of crop loss using NDVI derived from Sentinel-2 observations.
Field observations, time series based NDVI composites and
difference of pre and post-cyclone images and thresholding
was used for loss assessment. Results showed the crop classifi-
cation accuracies of 87.23% and 92.22% for rice and coconut,
respectively. We compared the performance of our loss assess-
ment approach with the data available from the government
at a block level regarding Gaja affected areas. Reasonably
good agreement was found between the regions estimated, and
the government reports. However, we are working towards
strengthening the proposed methodology for various crops
(Wheat, Jowar, Cotton, etc.) and natural calamities like flood,
hail-storm, etc.
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