China United Property Insurance Co Ltd, the country's major insurer specializing in agricultural insurance, will build a digital agricultural insurance model along with the National Engineering and Technology Center for Information Agriculture, aiming to establish a leading insurance system for the industry.

Integrating big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technology, the digital insurance model will improve the retrieval convenience, management accuracy and application flexibility of business data.

The model will be based on the latest results from the Geographic Information Technology Joint Laboratory for Agricultural insurance, the first specialized laboratory engaged in the application and promotion of 3S (remote sensing, geographic information systems and global positioning systems) agricultural insurance in China.

Established in 2013, the lab has provided the company with technical support to analyze catastrophic disasters.

In 2014, it detected a wind disaster in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region with remote sensing technology, paying indemnities of 655 million yuan ($104 million). In 2015, it provided auxiliary decision making for the corn drought in Hebei province, paying indemnities of 400 million yuan.

The lab has so far researched and developed insurance services covering a wide range of fields, including the application of new science and technology in crop insurance and aquaculture insurance.

From 2007 to 2017, the company provided protection against risks equaling 1.73 trillion yuan for 251 million households and paid indemnities of 32 billion yuan to 41.8 million households.

Fan Hang contributed to this story