CRITE: Coffee Rehabilitation in Timor-Leste

This activity is a follow-up to a successful activation of the ESA EO Clinic offering support to to ADB’s Timor-Leste Resident Mission (ADB project “Preparation of a National Coffee Sector Development Plan for Timor-Leste”). Following the promising first results of the feasibility study in using EO to characterise past and current coffee-growing practices, the main project activities include the definition, implementation and application at large scale of innovative methods to optical and SAR remote sensing data for coffee crop mapping and monitoring in Timor-Leste where most of the coffee plantations grow under a shade tree system. Planetek Italia continues the work with local stakeholders, including a more detailed assessment of the methodology. A dedicated mission to Timor-Leste took place for collection of in-situ validation data and capacity building. A prototype coffee plantation map is ready, based Sentinel-1/2 and an updated classification methodology which combines Machine Learning and Deep Learning Classifiers, integrating the information available about the shadow tree species, obtained in the field. First qualitative validation shows a higher performance of this methodology with respect to the first mapping done in the EO Clinic project. ADB contributes to this activity with logistics support to the validation exercise and capacity building support.