Abstract
A drought-monitoring and forecasting system developed for the Tuscany region was improved in order to provide a semi-automatic, more detailed, timely and comprehensive operational service for decision making, water authorities, researchers and general stakeholders. Ground-based and satellite data from different sources (regional meteorological stations network, MODIS Terra satellite and CHIRPS/CRU precipitation datasets) are integrated through an open-source, interoperable SDI (spatial data infrastructure) based on PostgreSQL/PostGIS to produce vegetation and precipitation indices that allow following of the occurrence and evolution of a drought event. The SDI allows the dissemination of comprehensive, up-to-date and customizable information suitable for different end-users through different channels, from a web page and monthly bulletins, to interoperable web services, and a comprehensive climate service. The web services allow geospatial elaborations on the fly, and the geo-database can be increased with new input/output data to respond to specific requests or to increase the spatial resolution.
Highlights
Global challenges that environmental applied research is facing in the last years are related to minimizing the climate change impacts while increasing environmental resilience
Over the years of testing, the framework has evolved from the point of view both of the enrichment of the set of indices, and the improvement in the spatial resolution; but the main bottleneck has remained the non-automation of the operational chain and the lack of a unique working environment, which limits the resource optimization. For these reasons, looking forward the development of a permanent Tuscan drought observatory (DO), our research studies are concentrated on the implementation of a spatial data infrastructure (SDI) that follows the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm [17], based on the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards
The overall aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive operational monitoring and forecasting system based on open and interoperable technological solutions, implemented to facilitate the communication of scientific knowledge on drought assessment for decision-making processes
Summary
Global challenges that environmental applied research is facing in the last years are related to minimizing the climate change impacts while increasing environmental resilience (from agricultural production to human wellbeing, natural resource conservation, etc.). In Italy, the Hydro–Meteo–Climate Service of the Regional Environmental Agency (ARPA) of Emilia Romagna is probably the most comprehensive drought observatory (https://www.arpae.it/index.asp?idlivello=991), together with the Tuscan one Starting from these examples, even though climate change is a global phenomenon, its impacts can be detected at a local level; and from the needs of the Tuscany region and the Tuscan Water Authority to identify areas with the highest impact risk in order to take earlier decisions, the LaMMA Consortium (Environmental Modelling and Monitoring Laboratory for Sustainable Development), in collaboration with the Institute of Biometeorology of the National Research Council (IBIMET–CNR), implemented a system prototype for the identification of drought occurrences and trends [16]. The overall aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive operational monitoring and forecasting system based on open and interoperable technological solutions, implemented to facilitate the communication of scientific knowledge on drought assessment for decision-making processes
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