POSTER rdT

SOFTWARE TO COPE WITH
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF DROUGHTS - rdT
Marco ORLANDO, Maria João SANTOS, Raquel VERÍSSIMO & Rui RODRIGUES
INAG - Instituto da Água, Dir. de Serviços de Recursos Hídricos
Av. Alm. Gago Coutinho 30, 1049 - 066 Lisboa, Portugal
[email protected]
http://www.inag.pt
STRUCTURE
STRUCTURE OF
OF THE
THE SOFTWARE
SOFTWARE
Droughts are extreme events
characterised by persistency in time
and large-scale effects.
Spatial distribution of droughts is a
relevant characteristic for drought
analysis and the regional approach
requires a more complete tool for drought
studies.
Evaluation of Regional Droughts
The evaluation of regional droughts can
be performed by a regional drought
distribution model capable of linking
variables to the spatial evaluation of the
events, along with the quantification of
drought risk of occurrence.
DROUGHT
DROUGHT CHARACTERISTICS
CHARACTERISTICS
Several key points were retained for the
Drought areas and drought severity
Calculations involve the regional parameter for skewness
software development:
correction, regional replicates simulation, drought
evaluation and severity-area-frequency curves calculation.
?easiness and direct application of all
calculations to several types of input data;
Graphical analysis by means of maps and curves is also
?simple data verification and results
performed within the software except for the graphical
visualization of the curves which requires Excel.
visualization;
?fast performance and proper use of
memory and system resources.
RETURN
RETURN PERIOD
PERIOD ANALYSIS
ANALYSIS
VISUALIZATION
VISUALIZATION
--
OUTPUTS
OUTPUTS
Return period of regional droughts
Several tasks are performed graphically:
?Comparison between the severity-areafrequency curves and the historical series
Number of drought periods (%)
?Analysis of the curves obtained from the
Drought severity - sequences analysis
simulation.
Severity-area-frequency curves evaluation
Drought sequence
The software developed for regional drought
analysis is a tool for drought-sequence
evaluation and the visualisation of drought
distribution in space and time. ARC/INFO®
ASCII grid was chosen for spatial data
format.
Essentially any relevant calculation or result
can be outputted in text format for further
application or interpretation.
Example for 1952 - Precipitation (X), Mean-Precipitation (Xp) and Standardised Precipitation (-z)
Bibliography:
Acknowledgements:
HENRIQUES A.G. & M.J.J. SANTOS 1999 – “Regional drought distribution model”, Physics and Chemistry of
the earth, Part B: Hydrology, Oceans and Atmosphere, European Water Resources and Climate Change
Processes, European Geophysical Society, Vol.24, nº1/2, pp.19-22.
ORLANDO M. 2000 - rdT-Regional drought distribution model (version 3.0), User Manual (Portuguese and
English version), ARIDE-INAG.
SANTOS M.J.J. 1996 - Modelo de distribuição de secas regionais. MSc Thesis, Universidade Técnica de
Lisboa Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, 129 p.
SANTOS M.J. & HENRIQUES R. 1999 - Analysis of the European annual precipitation series, ARIDE Technical
report number 3, INAG, 38 p.
SANTOS M.J., HENRIQUES R., FERNANDES S. & RODRIGUES R. 1999 - Delimitation of Affinity Regions in
Western Europe for the application of the Regional Drought Model to annual precipitation data, ARIDE Technical
report number 4, INAG, 19 p.
SANTOS M.J., HENRIQUES R., FERNANDES S., ORLANDO M. & RODRIGUES R. 2000 - Overview of
Regional Meteorological Drought Analysis on Western Europe, ARIDE Technical report number 10, INAG, 104 p.
EGS XXVI General Assembly, March 2001, Nice, France
The research presented in this poster
was carried out in the framework of the
ARIDE Project (Assessment of the
Regional Impact of Droughts in
Europe). Support was given by the
European Commission under Contract
no. ENV4-CT97-0553.