Taiwan - Establishment of an early warning system for crop disasters

Issues and Objectives

Meteorological disasters often lead to crop yield reductions during agricultural production. Although the Council of Agriculture and local research and improvement stations issue warnings to farmers before disasters occur, there is still a lack of a systematic and timely reporting system, making it difficult for farmers to take timely precautions. For example, in 2016, Taiwan was hit by a cold wave and several typhoons, resulting in agricultural losses of up to NT$27.2 billion.

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Improvement Measures Taken

The Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) developed the "Crop Disaster Early Warning System." This system integrates information on crop growth characteristics, disaster-prone growth stages, and long-term accumulated records of past crop damage and meteorological data. It then combines this with real-time meteorological data and disaster forecasting operations from the Central Weather Bureau to establish an integrated database for crops and weather.

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Results

The early warning system for crop disasters integrates meteorological, disaster, and crop data. Through the crop disaster early warning platform (Figure 1), it provides real-time observation, disaster hotspots, refined forecasts, disaster prevention cultivation history, and prevention techniques for historical agricultural disasters. It also provides early warnings of crop disasters on a weekly timescale for major crops in various townships (Figure 2) and important crop production areas, giving farmers sufficient information before, during, and after disasters. Furthermore, the system utilizes an app (Figure 3) to allow farmers to keep abreast of disaster information and facilitate disaster response measures for crops in the field.

Figure 1. Homepage of the Crop Disaster Early Warning System (Image source: Reference URL 2)

Figure 2. Early warning function of crop disasters at the township level (Image source: Reference URL 2)

 

 

Figure 3. Introduction to the early warning and push-seeding system for crops

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Reference Websites

1. Agricultural Meteorological Disaster Technology Special Issue https://www.tari.gov.tw/publication3/index-1.asp?Parser=99,9,54,,,,,215。 
2. Crop Disaster Early Warning Platform Homepage (Web Version) https://disaster.tari.gov.tw/ARI/。  
3. Android App https://goo.gl/2wu6Ji。 
4. iOS Apphttps://goo.gl/1VYV3t。 
5. Agricultural Disaster Information Network http://eocdss.ncdr.nat.gov.tw/web/ot/coa。

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