Climate-smart decision-making through accurate weather forecasts and agricultural advisory.
Novastar, IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, HACK VC, FINCA Ventures, Norrsken Foundation, USDIV, Achmea Accelerator, WE4F
Usual weather forecasts in tropical climates are too often inaccurate. Ignitia's main target is low-income farmers in the tropics (West Africa and Brazil) who due to dependency on rain-fed agriculture, are one of the most vulnerable groups to climate change.
Ignitia has modelled physics suited for meso scales with new parameterisation schemes and ensemble methodology, tailored for tropical conditions with different data assimilation and initialization techniques. Ignitia supplies farmers with rainfall forecasts delivered via SMS. An app allows access to richer weather risk content for subscribers such as field agents.
Ignitia's solution "iska" provides weather forecast messages via SMS for a population with low general literacy and low connectivity. The messages, after 120 trials resulted in an intuitive 7 keyword design, that can be easily comprehended even by illiterate populations. The solution is highly-scalable (weather stations on the ground are not necessary).
In 2021 Ignitia started exploring the LATAM market by entering Brazil, and the current focus lies on the product fit for this new market. Ignitia's technology can be adapted and deployed within the whole tropical belt, including southeast Asia.
