IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence (IJ-AI)
Vol 15, No 1: February 2026

Explainable rice yield from Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite data for food security

Dhimas Tribuana (Akademi Sekretari dan Manajemen Indonesia Publik)
Usman Sattar (Politeknik Bombana)
Baharuddin Mide (Universitas Ichsan Sidenreng Rappang)
Dayanti Dayanti (Universitas Patria Artha)



Article Info

Publish Date
01 Feb 2026

Abstract

Reliable, explainable crop-yield estimates are essential for food-security planning in data-sparse regions. We present a transparent pipeline for district-level (regency) rice yield prediction in Indonesia that fuses Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Sentinel-2 normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and weather/reanalysis features. The system standardizes inputs per province, fixes a 16-day temporal key, and uses a small, auditable ensemble of tree models (gradient boosting+light gradient-boosting machine (LightGBM)). Trained on ≤2023 data and evaluated on a 2024 temporal hold-out, a joint West Java ∪ South Sulawesi model achieves root mean square error (RMSE)≈0.80 t/ha, mean absolute error (MAE)≈0.48 t/ha, and R-squared (R²)≈0.33 at regency scale. Feature importances and Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) confirm that phenology (NDVI peak, integral, green-up/senescence), SAR backscatter (vertical transmit-vertical receive/vertical transmit-horizontal receive (VV/VH)), and wind/pressure are consistent drivers under monsoon conditions. The workflow supports routine, one-click provincial updates and produces parity maps and error bars for actionable diagnostics. These results demonstrate that combining Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and basic meteorology delivers accurate, interpretable, and operational yield signals suited to Indonesia’s food security needs, while providing a clear recipe for scaling to additional provinces.

Copyrights © 2026






Journal Info

Abbrev

IJAI

Publisher

Subject

Computer Science & IT Engineering

Description

IAES International Journal of Artificial Intelligence (IJ-AI) publishes articles in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The scope covers all artificial intelligence area and its application in the following topics: neural networks; fuzzy logic; simulated biological evolution algorithms (like ...