Development of drought index using drone imagery in South Korea

South Korea's paddy field agriculture is exposed to major risks due to the water shortage during the irrigation period lasting three years. Especially the conditions of the west and southern coastal areas are serious. For this purpose, it should be considered to adopt sophisticated technology to ensure adequate water management methods. Droughts cause severe human and economic damage and appropriate drought monitoring is important to reduce serious damage. In order to solve such a drought problem, it should be considered to adopt advanced monitoring technology to exploit appropriate water management methods by utilizing new technologies such as ICT and drone. Drought indices using drone image data are one of the effective methods for the paddy field drought monitoring. Drought indices which can evaluate spatial and temporal drought conditions are required for detailed paddy field drought monitoring. The main objective of this study was to develop a drought index using RGB and NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index). These indexes were aiming at design and development of an infounation system which supports paddy rice monitoring, using drone images for spatial evaluation. Blue wavelength band NDVI were used to evaluate the usefulness of drought damage conditions. The results showed that drought damage conditions and NDVI have good correlation in the beginning of the growing season and that Blue band and NDVI are valid for drought monitoring in these periods.