Water Resources Management in an Interdisciplinary and Changing Context

Abstract

Drought is a natural hazard characterised mainly by three dimensions: severity, duration and areal extent. Although several simplifications were proposed for the analysis of droughts for assisting water managers and policy makers to address this complex phenomenon, drought severity remains the key factor for the characterisation of drought. Drought severity is conventionally assessed by drought indices, which are simple or composite indicators useful for identifying and monitoring drought events in a meaningful way. The paper reports on a specialised software package, named DrinC (Drought Indices Calculator), which was developed aiming at providing a simple interface for the calculation of drought indices, with emphasis on two recently developed indices, the Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI) and the Streamflow Drought Index (SDI). The software can also be used for the calculation of the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Rainfall Deciles. Additionally, DrinC includes a module for the estimation of potential evapotranspiration (PET) through temperature based methods (Hargreaves, Blaney-Criddle and Thornthwaite), that can be used for the calculation of RDI. Finally, the software package incorporates useful tools assisting in the customisation of drought scenarios for fulfilling the requirements of a wide range of decision making cases. In the paper, a brief description of the theoretical basis of the aforementioned drought indices is also presented, together with some practical applications.