Drought risk reduction

Due to the shortage of water resources and its inhomogeneous distribution in space and time, large scale droughts occur frequently all over the world. Consequently, drought has become a key factor constraining the economic development and threatening the food security. This report describes the results of the Drought Risk Reduction project, which aimed at creating an integrated system for the monitoring and evaluation of drought at continental scale. A prototype operational system has been developed by combining remote sensing algorithms (SEBS) with a crop growth model (Rotask) in a data assimilation framework (Ensemble Kalman filter). The developed techniques are tested and partly implemented in the current drought forecasting system of Chin