A Farmstead-Specific Early Warning Service System for Weather Risk Management in Korea.

Recently, increased frequency of climate extremes is another face of climate change confronted by humans, resulting in catastrophic losses in agriculture. While climate extremes take place on many scales, impacts are experienced locally and mitigation tools are a function of local conditions. To address this, an early warning system must be place and location based, incorporating the climate, crop and land attributes at the appropriate scale. The purpose of the farmstead-specific early warning service system for weather risk management is to develop tailor-made risk management solutions for individual farms threatened by climate change and its variability. This system quantifies weather conditions into a “weather risk index” that is customized to the species of crops and its growth stage. When the risk is severe enough to cause any damage to the crops, the system is activated and the warning messages are delivered to the farmer’s mobile phones. The messages are sent with proper solutions that farmers may utilize to protect their crops against potential damage. The warning system is based on the comprehensive technologies including the scaling down of weather information to the field level and crop specific risk assessments. Currently, the technologies necessary to make the warning system more practical have been developed, including technologies for forecasting real-time weather conditions, scaling down of weather data to the individual farm level and risk assessments of specific crops. Furthermore, the scientific know-hows have been integrated into a web-based warning system (http://new.agmet.kr). This system provides volunteer farmers with direct, one-on-one weather data and disaster warnings along with relevant solutions. In 2016, the service was put in operation in a rural catchment of 6,000 km2. Now in this area, about 2,000 volunteer farmers who raise various crops are participating in this project to receive user-specific weather information from the service and in turn, provide feedback and evaluations to the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences.