Drought Risk Management in Cambodia
Year: 2009-2012
Country: Cambodia
Location within country: Tonle Sap watershed
The main objective of the programme was to create awareness and improve the skills of the national agencies in utilizing satellite images in disaster risk reduction and emergency response in eight ASEAN member countries.
Descriptions
A project on drought risk management was implemented in the watershed of the Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia under the programme to support decision making for drought risk management. Three types of data were used in this project, namely, Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite data, MODIS satellite data and historical rainfall data from nearest meteorological stations. Using TRMM data from archive, the long-term rainfall anomalies were identified to identify the drought prone areas in the watershed. Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TDVI) model was implemented using MODIS data and produced Soil Moisture Index (SMI) maps from 2000 to 2009 in monthly basis. Standardized precipitation Index (SPI) model was implemented using rainfall data verifications satellite data derived drought extent maps. Finally, all the indices were used to produce drought hazard maps and combined with the vulnerable elements-at-risk to create drought risk maps. Results were compared with study conducted by the World Food Programme (WFP) in 2003 and we found a very close correspondence.