Consistent Rice Information for Sustainable Policy

As the ESA-funded CRISP (Consistent Rice Information for Sustainable Policy) project approaches its final milestone, we look back on a journey of innovations and forward to a new era of operational rice monitoring. Built upon the robust technological foundation developed over years during the successful RIICE project, CRISP represents a major leap forward in large-scale, automated crop monitoring. By scaling up advanced Earth Observation (EO) solutions, the project has provided crucial insights into global food security from the precise mapping of cultivated areas and phenology to reliable yield estimations and disaster impact assessments.

We are proud to announce that the comprehensive and independent Validation Report, compiled by our partners at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), is now officially complete and available for download on our website.

The conclusion of the demonstration phase marks the beginning of CRISP’s deployment. The CRISP Rice Monitoring Solution is currently in the process of being onboarded onto the ESA Network of Resources (NoR) as a Data Processing as a Service (DPaaS). While certain Premium functionalities remain exclusive to sarmap’s commercial offering, the CRISP suite accessible via the NoR leverages a functional, custom-built Data Analytics module developed by CGI. This ensures that institutional users, policymakers, and humanitarian organizations can not only generate data but also deeply explore, visualize, and extract actionable insights from it.

Once fully onboarded, users will be able to request on-demand services for their specific Areas of Interest, including:

• Baseline Mapping & Start of Season (SoS): Accurate detection of rice extent and crop establishment dates.
• Yield Estimation: Integration of EO-derived phenology into crop growth models for reliable production forecasts.
• Impact Assessment: Rapid evaluation of crop damages following extreme weather events like floods or droughts.

Eligible users will also have the opportunity to request ESA sponsorship to cover the cloud processing resources needed to generate these datasets.

We know that the journey does not stop here. While CRISP has established a highly reliable operational baseline, continuous innovation is already underway. The integration of cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and the exploitation of data from new satellite sensors are actively being developed to push the boundaries of what our monitoring technology can achieve.

The CRISP consortium will officially close the project during the Final Review Meeting at the ESA ESRIN headquarters in Frascati, Italy, at the end of March. We extend our deepest gratitude to Zoltan Szantoi and Magdalena Fitrzyk from ESA, to all the Early Adopters, stakeholders, and scientific partners who contributed to this success.