Drought

Overview of the Drought service

The drought service relies heavily on the development of an open source drought monitoring software that will capacitate users to develop drought products that will inform decision makers regarding drought situations in their countries. As the user will have freedom to create a wide range of products based on various input data and indices, there will be an emphasis on training users regarding the correct application of the software and resultant products.

 

Some of the input data will be distributed through the EUMETCast system in near real time while a historical archive will accompany the software.

 

Apart from training, the software will guide users in terms of providing them with a range of fixed existing algorithms that can be used to create drought-monitoring products.

Patterson, Eastern Cape, January 2010

Livestock affected by drought

Photo credits:                                                      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2009/feb/05/global-drought

The software will allow users to create products, produce maps from the products, produce graphs from the data and finally produce a report template that can be populated by the exported images and/or graphs as well as text by the user. Apart from allowing the export of Maps and graphs, images created to be used in maps as well as the original numerical data values used to create graphs could be exported for analysis in other software.

The Drought Service products will assist Policy and Decision makers to prioritize the most severely affected areas and distribute funds to where there are most needed. The products will also enhance efficiency of Decision Makers during planning

 

Botswana drought, 1986

Features of drought monitoring System

  • System will be developed in open source and builds on existing drought monitoring software
  • System that receives all operational data from EUMETCast / GEONetcast
  • Automatic data ingestion / human intervention
  • Guides user in existing drought monitoring techniques by the correct combination of data
  • Provides user with opportunity to define own combination of data

Output products are graphs, figures and statistics that can be copied into a word document template made available with the system for reports, advisories, newsletters

 

Livestock death due to drought

 

See also Drought Products and Users

See also Drought Products

See also Long Range Forecast Support Service