Strong winds and heavy rainfall brought by Typhoon Gaemi caused serious damage to the agriculture industry in Taiwan. As the disaster areas are too vast to investigate, in accordance with Article 12 of the Agricultural Natural Disaster Relief Regulations (農業天然災害救助辦法), modern scientific and technological assistance should be used to accelerate such examinations and disaster relief operations.
The Ministry of Agriculture should adopt the following methods for disaster relief:
First, the ministry should encourage farmers to use the “agricultural natural disaster photo” app, so they can directly upload photographs of damage and specify the location to enhance the efficiency of disaster surveys.
Second, based on the amount of rainfall, flooding situation, disaster loss and crop characteristics in each area — as well as scientific data such as the past surveys and weather indices — crop items with a loss rate exceeding 20 percent or higher can be confirmed and then exempted from an on-site investigation after they are listed as exempted crops. This would save local township offices labor and time in recognizing the loss rate of damaged crops when conducting on-site surveys.
Last, drones should be used to check the damage to local agricultural facilities.
They can take images of the farmland that applies for disaster relief, and authorities can compare the images with maps and could even conduct a digital analysis based on the information.
That would allow for the identification of damaged sections of farmland, and the analysis of the damage rate to agricultural facilities — such as greenhouses.
Yeh Yu-cheng is a secretary at the Pingtung Public Health Bureau.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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