Concept

To ensure the environmental and socioeconomic sustainability of semi-arid regions in the world under climate and land use changes and more recurrent and intense droughts, we need tools able to: a) anticipate the onset of droughts and water scarcity and provide early warnings; and b) supply key information on how to effectively manage and mitigate their potential consequences.

InfoSequía is a Drought Monitoring and Impact Assessment Toolbox which provides straightforward and up-to-date data and warnings on the drought status of a region, and the severity and spatial extent of its impacts. InfoSequía is offered as a site- and user-specific tailored IT-toolbox, with a flexible and modular architecture integrated by tools for:

  1. The detection, surveillance and monitoring of drought periods based on satellite-based and social-media data;
  2. The prediction and spatial analysis of their potential hydrological impacts, and
  3. Supporting users and decision makers on the more efficient management strategies available to mitigate drought consequences.

InfoSequía outputs are provided through pdf bulletins, or a web-mapping app from which all the data can be interactively queried and downloaded. Due to its flexibility and scalable architecture, InfoSequía can be easily integrated in other Drought Early Warning Systems or Control/Information Centres.

Figure 1. InfoSequia flowchart.

FutureWater applications

InfoSequía’s components have been developed by FutureWater and tested under computer-based and operational conditions during more than 5 years. It has a validated TRL8

Potential beneficiaries and end-users of InfoSequía are:

  1. Water Basin & Regional Environmental Authorities (e.g. drought monitoring)
  2. Forestry and Fire-Risk managers (e.g fire-risk monitoring)
  3. Farmer associations and syndicates (e.g. crop-yield impacts, water allocation risk assessment, drought forecasting)
  4. Insurance and reinsurance companies (e.g. indirect-index insurance products)

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