For a country like India whose economy is primarily dependent on agriculture and experiencing frequent drought episodes, is it enough to assess those drought conditions based on precipitation alone? That being the case, we used Multivariate Standardized Drought Index to analyze the historical drought conditions caused by simultaneous deficits in precipitation and soil moisture for 30 meteorological sub-divisions in India. Further, we present a country-wide multivariate drought atlas for India based on the severity-duration-frequency relationships.  

The 2015 drought event in India had affected multiple sectors including reservoir levels, crop yields, and well-being of people. This drought event was deficient in both precipitation and soil moisture. Therefore, we used the developed multivariate drought atlas to analyze the rarity, spatial extent, and the historical context of the impactful 2015 drought. The 2015 drought atlas reveals that many regions in India experienced a rare drought with return periods greater than 100 years.

Ever wondered how floods are monitored across the world? Very often we might think that there is someone regularly monitoring the flood extents when a calamity strikes, and when relief efforts are in full swing. This is based on our assumption that with the advent of satellite remote sensing, including optical and synthetic radar satellites, it gives us the capability to map flood events on an unprecedented spatial scale. However, even with such advancement of technology, we still cannot predict which places might be flooded on any given day. This in turn always results in an inadequate temporal sampling of flood extents since these traditional satellites do not cover the entire world at any given time. We have come up with a methodology to map inundation periodically which makes use of novel reflected GPS signals that are available daily on a near-global scale.

The paper can be found here: www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/12/18/3026 

Media Coverage of our work:

1. https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/flood-mapping-technology-to-save-lives,-communities-in-india?fbclid=IwAR1bH5A-phpCc0rFeh0EmaUuZJ3_j332KwxHXzOokKh4yoWU4vwavxEEWqA#.XwO28bY7flE.twitter

2. https://lens.monash.edu/@kesav-unnithan/2020/07/07/1380771/satellite-saviour-new-mapping-technology-to-help-india-prepare-for-floods

3. https://www.facebook.com/2102757233344392/videos/653138691948413