Quantifying yield loss with Sentinel-2: a 2026 playbook
How to use free Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery to defensibly quantify drought, hail, and frost losses for insurance claims.
Five years ago, satellite-backed yield-loss claims were a luxury for large agribusiness. Today, free Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery at 10-meter resolution makes them table stakes for any serious crop damage expert.
The playbook is simple: define the field polygon, pull the NDVI time series for the current season and a 5-year baseline, identify the event window (hail storm, frost event, drought onset), and quantify the departure from baseline as a percentage. Multiply by expected yield and price benchmark to get loss in monetary terms.
The trap is over-interpreting. NDVI saturates above 0.8 for dense canopy, drops naturally during senescence, and reacts to clouds in ways that look like damage but aren't. Always ground-truth with field photos and a sample of physical inspection, especially for high-value claims.
GARAASSETS automates the full pipeline — field draw, baseline pull, event-window comparison, damage model, monetary loss calculation, and report generation — but the agronomist's judgment is what makes the opinion defensible.