A real-time online drought broadcast system for monitoring soil moisture index

Drought is a complex phenomenon that varies in intensity over space and time. Due to the spatial and temporal variabilities of drought, better tools are required to assess its severity and spatial extent at any point. Because agricultural drought is influenced by several factors such as rainfall, soil characteristics, and crop type, we propose an analysis method using the soil moisture index to assess drought conditions. Effective drought management can be achieved using drought monitoring if the current conditions can be assessed and future drought development predicted, and decision-makers have required drought response operations that should be available and accessible for use in a short period of time and need to be updated on the latest drought situation. In this study, we developed a web-based geographic information system technology that can broadcast drought conditions in real-time over the Internet and can assist drought management to improve the quality of their decision-making and increase efficiency and effectiveness due to the demand for interaction between decision-makers in the drought management, particularly during drought response. The primary objective of a real-time online drought broadcast system is to provide real-time drought data accessibility and analysis by permitting access to drought's intensity, duration, patterns, and clearly illustrating the spatial extent of drought through the Web, and to contribute to better policy and decision making for drought management. Users can access the www graphical user interface and be able to readily access for current drought condition, respond to drought events more effectively, and provide comparisons of the current drought event to past events. In addition, users can obtain a daily soil moisture index map and evaluate the severity of the agricultural drought based on soil moisture changes. Our system can be used by decision-makers to assess current drought conditions, thereby allowing for informed drought management decisions. Our real time web-based drought broadcasting system is accessible over the web at the following URL: http://ruralwater.snu.ac.kr/drought.