Flood and Drought Management Tools

DSS status by June 6th 2015

News ― This news note provides a brief highlight of the ongoing developments of selected functionality within the decision support system (DSS).

DSS status by June 6th 2015

GLOBAL DATA

Data availability is one of the several critical issues in many river basins, and one of the project objectives will be to make it easier to use available datasets by providing access to data through the DSS. A number of global datasets have been collected and will be populated in the developed DSS so they are available for the users. The aim is to provide basic global datasets enabling users to perform basic planning tasks, even if the availability of local data is limited.
Current status: Initial datasets downloaded and processed. It is expected that the functionality for using global data will be available for validation and evaluation in late 2015.

Global dataData availability is one of the several critical issues in many river basins, and one of the project objectives will be to make it easier to use available datasets by providing access to data through the DSS. A number of global datasets have been collected and will be populated in the developed DSS so they are available for the users. The aim is to provide basic global datasets enabling users to perform basic planning tasks, even if the availability of local data is limited.Current status: Initial datasets downloaded and processed. It is expected that the functionality for using global data will be available for validation and evaluation in late 2015.

Figure 1. Screen dump of global data functionality

REMOTE SENSING

Remote sensing data could be an important data source and the project will provide an automated approach for utilising selected data sources in drought planning (e.g. NDVI, soil moisture and TRMM data). The approach will be developed in QGIS but with a direct link to the Planning DSS.

The project will support a number of data sources including:

  • NDVI
  • Land cover
  • Flood maps
  • Rainfall (TRMM)

Current status: NDVI download and processing is implemented, while NDVI based indices are pending. It is expected that the remote sensing functionality will be available in a draft version by October 2015.

Figure 2. Screen dump of current version of remote sensing tool within QGIS

SEASONAL FORECAST

The seasonal forecasting functionality in the Planning DSS is supposed to assist users to predict short to medium range evolution of the climate. The seasonal forecast functionality will provide linkage to an operational seasonal forecast (NCEP CFSv2 model), and will produce ensembles of seasonal forecast for the rainfall. This could be maps showing the monthly-accumulated rainfall for the coming 3 months.

The forecasted rainfall would be used as input to tools calculating drought indices or to hydrological models used to calculate the environmental impact.

Current status: the project will have a first version of a seasonal forecast tool in operation during September 2015.

Figure 3. Schematic workflow for accessing and processing seasonal forecast data in the Planning DSS

DROUGHT INDICES

Drought indices are used for identifying the start and severity of a drought. Different indices will be supported, e.g. SPI and SPEI. The drought indices will be used to evaluate the current drought status (indices based on historical data only), or for predicting the future drought condition (indices based on forecasted climate).

Current status:  SPI and SPEI are implemented for historical data only while the implementation for forecasted data is missing. Full functionality for SPI and SPEI will be implemented by August 2015.

Figure 4. Schematic workflow for calculating drought indices in the Planning DSS