The Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System (GIDMaPS) is one of the first global multi-index drought monitoring and seasonal prediction systems. GIDMaPS provides near real-time drought information including persistence-based drought prediction using (a) soil moisture accumulations-based standardized soil moisture index (SSI); and (b) the newly developed Multivariate Standardized Drought Index (MSDI). The seasonal forecast component of GIDMaPS provides the probability of drought occurrence for different drought severity levels. The monitoring component of GIDMaPS presents drought information based on five categories of drought types: D0 (abnormally dry), D1 (moderate drought), D2 (severe drought), D3 (extreme drought), and D4 (exceptional drought). The seasonal drought prediction component is based on two input data sets available from NASA (MERRA and NLDAS) and three drought indicators (SPI, SSI, and MSDI). The outputs of the seasonal prediction component are probability of drought occurrence. To date, most studies and models have explored droughts monitoring using univariate indicators (e.g., SPI). As an alternative to currently available univariate drought indices, GIDMaPS includes a novel multivariate multi-index approach (MSDI) which provides a composite assessment of both agricultural and meteorological droughts.
The proposed innovation could be useful to a broad list of customers including (a) commodity investors; (b) insurance and re-insurance companies; (c) energy companies; (d) private farmers; (e) government agencies, such as the United States Department of Agriculture; and (f) state agencies, such as the Department of Water Resources. Commodity investors, for example, need seasonal predictions (1-6 months) at the global scale since droughts in several countries can affect global food prices. For this reason, GIDMaPS outputs can be used to make investment decisions. Furthermore, the proposed methodology has the potential to improve the current capabilities of the U.S. Drought Monitor which only provides monitoring information without any drought prediction. Finally, in the past decade, several drought events led to famine, resulting in loss of lives and dire societal impacts. GIDMaPS can provide drought early warning and potentially be used for managing drought relieve operations.
