Drought Information and Management
Abstract : Drought is the most complex of all natural hazards. The lack of progress in drought preparedness planning and the development of national drought policies is a reflection of this complexity. With the demand for water increasing because of expanding population, urbanization, changes in land use, and many other factors, the time to move to a more risk-based drought management approach is now. Given projected increases in temperature and uncertainties regarding the amount, distribution, and intensity of precipitation, the frequency, severity, and duration of drought may increase in the future. Making the transition from crisis to drought risk management is difficult because governments and individuals typically address drought-related issues through a reactive approach and very little institutional capacity exists in most countries for altering this paradigm. Drought mitigation planning is directed at building the institutional capacity necessary to move away from this crisis management paradigm. This change is not expected to occur quickly – it is in fact a gradual process that requires changes in government policies and human behavior. Developing improved drought monitoring and early warning systems in support of drought preparedness planning and policy is an urgent need for all drought-prone counties.
? In addition, drought response is post-impact and relief tends to reinforce existing resource management methods.
? It is precisely these existing resource management practices that have often increased societal vulnerability to drought. The provision of drought relief only serves to reinforce the status quo in terms of resource management.
? Many governments and others now understand the fallacy of crisis management and are striving to learn how to employ proper risk management techniques to reduce societal vulnerability to drought and, therefore, lessen the impacts associated with future drought events.
? Making the transition from crisis to drought risk management is difficult because governments and individuals typically address drought-related issues through a reactive approach and very little institutional capacity exists in most countries for altering this paradigm.
? Drought also tends to affect large numbers of people principally because of its impact on both water supply and demand.
? When a natural hazard event and resultant disaster has occurred, governments and donors have followed with impact assessment, response, recovery, and reconstruction activities to return the region or locality to a pre-disaster state.
• The purpose of the planning process is to derive a plan that is dynamic, reflecting the changing government policies, technologies, and natural resource management practices.
• The survey found that quality assurance and quality control are practiced by a majority of these networks, but meta datasets are highly variable, as would be expected with the wide range of purposes and inception dates.
• The purpose of crop yield monitoring and forecasting, the indicators obviously have to be crop specific.
? Preparedness for drought necessitates greater institutional capacity at all levels of government and more efficient coordination between different levels of government.
? SPI represents the amount of rainfall over a given time scale, with the advantage that it also gives an indication of what this amount is in relation to the normal, thus leading to the definition of whether a station is experiencing drought or not.
? It has also been useful as a drought monitoring tool and has been used to trigger actions associated with drought contingency plans.
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