A field visit was organized to drought affected districts in Polonnaruwa, Kurunagala to evaluate the product performance and brief Irrigation authorities and local communities. IWMI and GWP members had the chance to interact with the officials for implementation on the possible use of remote sensing derived drought condition in early warning and develop drought preparedness plan. The information can be used to understand how the local people can cope with droughts and what drought risk reduction mechanisms are in place.

A joint field mission was organized to get a feel on the ongoing drought in Solapur, Osmanabad, Beed and Latur districts which were severely affected by drought in 2014. From media sources, it was estimated around 5,700 villages in Maharashtra are to be declared drought-affected which will take the total number of villages which lost more than 50 per cent crops to around 24,000 in the state. The number of drought-hit villages this year is twice the number of villages affected by the 2012 drought in the state.

Team members have further evaluated the performance of integrated drought severity index in the Southern Province. A series of drought maps were evaluated in detail the drought intensity class and cross checked in the ground. Overall the product seems to be reliable with the accuracy limit varying between 75-80%.

Given the large-scale agricultural losses from drought, the Maharashtra government on October 16 declared drought in 14,708 villages in the state. Maharashtra government had last month said that if the state receives less than 50% of average rainfall between June and July. The region of Marathwada has been worst-hit, with a drought-like condition declared in every single village. As many as 8,522 villages in the region have been impacted. This accounts for 58% of the drought area in the state. A reasonable good correlation was achieved with the IWMI’s drought product in comparison to the field observation carried out in Aurangabad, Beed, Parbhani and Jalna as seen in the.

Global Water Partnership South Asia (GWP SAS) in collaboration with International Water Management Institute (IWMI) organised the first Webinar using Skype for Business to present the 'Development of South Asia Drought Monitoring System (SADMS)' on 30 September 2015.

Easy to read maps using satellite images have been developed for the central Indian region of Bundelkhand which experiences regular severe droughts. The region straddling the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh is home to thousands of smallholder farmers who bear the brunt of droughts. The drought maps developed by SADMS shows the severity over different areas. more..
News article published in Gaon Connection

Vulnerability to drought needs to be tackled through preventative measures at the local level, experts from across Southeast Asia learned at a WLE-supported workshop in Chonburi, Thailand this week. At the Regional Workshop on Building Drought Resilience in Agriculture Partnerships and Outreach, 5-8 December 2017, experts from water and the climate agencies in the ASEAN region worked through strategies to help local agencies draw drought preparedness and risk mitigation plans. more..

At any one time, over two thousand human-made satellites are circling our planet. They help us communicate, locate, observe, and gather data. As agricultural scientists try to predict crop conditions in these climate-complex times, they are increasingly turning to “remote sensing” – using data collected from satellites. In particular, satellites have been used to measure soil moisture in order to predict and prepare for flood, droughts and other risks. more..