SEADW User Guide

Version No. 01 | SEP 2024

Southeast Asia Drought Watch (SEADW)

Version 1.0

User’s Guide

Contents:

1. Introduction

2. Overview of Web Portal

3. Access Drought Related Information

4. Feature Articles/Knowledge Center

5. Climate Studies

Click here to download the stepwise offline user guide

1. Introduction

In the context of decision-making, the Southeast Asia Drought Watch (SEADW) helps to address the much needed drought preparedness, monitoring and forecasting as well as crop yield information for selected crops while assessing economic, social and environmental impacts in the Lower Mekong countries.

The SEADW deploys the Regional Hydrologic Extreme Assessment System (RHEAS) that is an integration of hydrological and crop simulation models developed by NASA-Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The core of the RHEAS framework is the Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model and the Decision Support System for Agro-Technology Transfer (DSSAT) model that automates the deployment of nowcasting and forecasting hydrologic simulations and ingests satellite observations through data assimilation. It also allows coupling of other environmental models and facilitates the delivery of data products to users via a GIS enabled database. The system’s ability to carry our nowcast and forecast within the framework at the same time gives an upper edge to the present existing resources or systems available for drought and crop yield monitoring.

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2. Overview of Web Portal

Features

Easy access and visualize of daily historical, present and future

drought related conditions across the Lower Mekong Region
crop yield estimates across the Lower Mekong Region

The data is updated every two weeks
Long term data availability/FTP data repository
Availability of variety of satellite and model based drought indicators and a single composite drought indicator (CDI)
Availability of variety of soil, water balance and energy balance variables
More convenient access to data products
Regional level focused high-resolution information that can be used in local level decisions
Country level, Different admin level areas of selections
Generation of flexible time-series charts
Download the map data in GIS formats
Custom report generation
Detailed guidance on using data streams for conditions monitoring and forecasting
Feature articles/Knowledge products
Climate projections data for long-term planning

General components of the user interface

Description of the components:

No	Component	Purpose
1	Drought	Provides access and information on drought (every 8 day) conditions. This is the default selection too
2	Crop Yield*	Provides the access and information on crop yield estimations and related
3	Interactive Map	Provides the access to the interactive map
4	Create Report*	Can be used to create customized drought reports
5	How to Use	Provides the user guide on how to use the interface
6	Current Conditions	Display current drought condition
7	Outlooks	Display 3 months drought outlook
8	Intensity/Warning Classification and Map Downloads	Map classification and downloads
9	Disclaimer	Product disclaimer
10	Intensity of Current Condition	Tables provides the details on the classification of current drought condition
11	Outlook Warning	Tables provides the details on the classification of outlook drought condition
12	Drought Summary	Details text drought summary in country scale
13	Interactive Map	Shortcut link for accessing the interactive map
14	Feature Articles/Knowledge Center	Provides featured news articles and important documents related to drought
15	Climate Studies*	Provides interactive map access to visualize drought related information generated from climate change projections
16	Contacts	Contact details
17	Menu Links	Provides access to ‘Technical Documents’, ‘Feedback’ and “How to Use’
18	Our Services	Provides access to main services

* Feature will be live soon

3. Access Drought Information

Front page provides a more comprehensive overall situation of the drought conditions in the both current and forecasted mode for the Lower Mekong Region.

Current Condition:

19	Map Updated: YYYY-MM-DD	Denotes the map updated date
20	Current	Shows the latest available map
21	< 8D	Shows 8-day ago map
22	<16D	Shows 16-day ago map
23	< 24D	Shows 24-day ago map
24	Map View	Corresponding map as per the date selection is displayed here in Interactive view mode
25	Map classification	Map classifies according to intensity of the dry condition
26	Map download	Displaying map can be downloaded in GeoTIFF format. Users need to use map factor value (X 0.0001 (4 decimals)) to convert to the correct values.

Outlooks:

27	Map Updated: YYYY-MM-DD	Denotes the map updated date
28	1M	Shows 1-month outlook
29	2M	Shows 2-month outlook
30	3M	Shows 3-month outlook
31	Map View	Corresponding map as per the month selection is displayed here in Interactive view mode
32	Map classification	Map classifies according to intensity of the dry condition
33	Map download	2-month, 2-month and 3-month outlook map can be download in GeoTIFF format

Select Desired Area:

34	Select desired country	Move the mouse pointer over the map and it will automatically highlight the country. Then click on desired country
35/39	Selection step	This will show the selected step of the geography Region > Country > Province/State If you want to move back, click on previous step
36/40	Selected country	When you select any country or province/state either on ‘Current Conditions’ or ‘Outlooks’, the same selection would appear on both the maps simultaneously
37	Map controls	To zoom in zoom out the map view
38	Name of the selected area	This shows the area and country names of the selected area

Intensity of Current Conditions:

The table provides guidance information such as possible probability of occurrence, risk level and possible observable conditions and impacts on each drought category for the current conditions map.

Outlook Warning:

The table provides guidance information such as possible observable conditions and impacts on each warning category for the outlook map.

Access Interactive Map:

The interactive map can be accessed by clicking either on or in the front page. This map allows users to visualize a number of satellite and model based drought and other indicators in an interactive way.

41	Area	User can select desired area Mekong Region (entire region) LMR Basin (Mekong basin in the Lower Mekong Region) Country Level Administrative Level Clear Area: This will clear current selection
42	Select Indicator	User can select desired satellite based (SB) and model based (MB) drought indicators and other required variables
43	Calendar	Can be used to select required date to visualize the map Default map selection would be based on the latest available date The variables which have forecasted information, the default map selection would be the farthest available forecasted date
44	Map View	Displays the map as per the selections
45	Map Controls	To zoom in and zoom out the map display
46	Compare Layers	This feature helps to compare any two different variables together for any date. Details are listed below
47	Download Raster	The current displaying map can be downloaded in GeoTIFF format. Users need to use respective map factor values to convert to the correct values for some drought indicators. [Get map factors]
48	Legend	Click here to hide and unhide the map legend
49	Basemap	To switch the base map. Three map options are available
50	Opacity	This slider can be used to change the opacity of the map
51	Map Legend	Map legend helps to understand the different categories of the map

Compare Layers:

This selection window helps the user to load two different variables or the same variable for two different dates for comparing each other. Once required selections are done click on ‘Add Layers’ to open the comparable map window.

52	Slider	Move slider either to left or to right direction to compare the two maps
53	Legend and the selection	This shows the map legend and the selected variable name as well as the date
54	Compare Layers	Click here to exit the map comparison

Time Series Graph:

55	Select Indices	Select the required indicator for drawing the time series graph
56	Select Periodicity	Select the required period for drawing the time series graph Default selection is ‘1 Year’ Last date can be selected from the calendar available in the main map view for drawing the graph. i.e. the graph would be drawn 1 year (or 3 months or 1 month) back from the selected date
57	Statistics	Shows the minimum, maximum and average values of the selected date
58	Chart Context Menu	Allows to print and download the graph as well as to download the data in .csv and .xls format

Comparison of Time Series Graphs:

Users can compare two time series graphs of two different variables for a selected period of time.

59	Select Indices	Select first variable for the comparison
60	Select Periodicity	Select periodicity for drawing the graph
61	Select Indices	Select second variable for the comparison

Read Some Important Information about Available Indicators:

This panel helps the users to get Important Information about Available Indicators such as introduction, spatial and temporal resolutions, values range, etc. Click on the dash line to change the indicator.

Map Factors for Drought indicators:

Indicator	Map Factor	Value Range
Moisture Stress Index (MSI)	X 0.0001 (4 decimals)	0 to 3+ (Nodata: -9999)
Atmospherically Resistant Vegetation Index (ARVI)	X 0.0001 (4 decimals)	-1 to 1 (Nodata: -9999)
Visible and Shortwave infrared Drought Index (VSDI)	X 0.0001 (4 decimals)	0 to 2/3 (Nodata: -9999)
Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI)	X 0.0001 (4 decimals)	-1 to 1 (Nodata: -9999)
Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI)	X 0.0001 (4 decimals)	0 to 1 (Nodata: -9999)
Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)	X 0.0001 (4 decimals)	-1 to 1 (Nodata: -9999)

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4. Access Crop Yield Information

This feature will be provided below listed information (maps/data) in monitoring and forecasting modes. This feature will be live soon.

Rice yield estimation (in province, district or commune level)
Amount of fertilizer and irrigation applied
Water stress
Grain weight
Planting dates and Leaf Area Index (LAI)
And other outputs which are available in conventional DSSAT

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5. Feature Articles/Knowledge Center

Users can access a number of featured articles on SEADW and its related services as well as knowledge products such as research articles, technical documents, guidance documents, etc. from the ‘Feature Articles/Knowledge Center’.

62	Feature Articles	Can be accessed the articles on SEADW and its related services
63	Knowledge Center	Can be accessed with knowledge products such as research articles, technical documents, guidance documents. etc.
64	Side Panel	Provides the shortcut links to each article and knowledge product

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6. Climate Studies

This is a feature to provide an interactive platform to display/visualize, evaluate, analyze climate change data. The intended audience is climate research scientists, meteorologists, hydrologists and anyone who needs to understand past and future (projected) climate patterns.

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