• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.145-159
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• 2019

A good number of drought indices have been introduced and applied in different regions for monitoring drought conditions, but some of those are region-specific and have limitations for use under other climatic conditions because of the inherently complex characteristics of drought phenomenon. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) indices are widely used all over the world, including Bangladesh. Although newly developed, studies have demonstrated The Effective Drought Index (EDI) to perform better compared to SPIs in some areas. This research examined the performance of EDI to the SPI for detecting drought events throughout 35 years (1981 to 2015) in Bangladesh. Rainfall data from 27 meteorological stations across Bangladesh were used to calculate the EDI and SPI values. Results suggest that the EDI can detect historical records of actual events better than SPIs. Moreover, EDI is more efficient in assessing both short and long-term droughts than SPIs. Results also indicate that SPI3 and the EDI indices have a better capability of detecting drought events in Bangladesh compared to other SPIs; however, SPI1 produced erroneous estimates. Therefore, EDI is found to be more responsive to drought conditions and can capture the real essence of the drought situation in Bangladesh. Outcomes from this study bear policy implications on mitigation measures to minimize the loss of agricultural production in drought-prone areas. Information on severity level and persistence of drought conditions will be instrumental for resource managers to allocate scarce resources optimally.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.2B
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• pp.87-98
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• 2011

Recently, occurrence frequency of extreme events like flood and drought is increasing due to climate change by global warming. Especially, a drought is more severer than other hydrologic disasters because it causes continuous damage through long period. But, ironically, it is difficult to recognize the importance and seriousness of droughts because droughts occur for a long stretch of time unlike flood. So as to analyze occurrence of droughts and prepare a countermeasure, this study analyzed a meteorologic drought among many kinds of drought that it is closely related with precipitation. Palmer Drought Severity Index, Standard Precipitation and Effective Drought Index are computed using precipitation and temperature material observed by Korean Meteorological Administration. With the result of comparative analysis of computed drought indices, Effective Drought Index is selected to execute frequency analysis because it is accordant to past droughts and has advantage to compute daily indices. A Frequency analysis of Effective Drought Index was executed using boundary kernel density function. In the result of analysis, occurrence periods of spring showed about between 10 year and 20 year, it implies that droughts of spring are more frequent than other seasons. And severity and occurrence period of droughts varied in different regions as occurrence periods of the Youngnam region and the southern coast of Korea are relatively shorter than other regions.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.14-27
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• 2020

The drought has occurred from the past, and has caused a lot of damage. It is important to analyze the past droughts and predict them in the future. In this study, the temperature and precipitation of the past and the future from climate change RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios were analyzed for Seosan and Boryeong in the western region of Chungnam Province, which is considered as a drought-prone area on the Korean Peninsula. Comparing Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Effective Drought Index (EDI) based on the past droughts, EDI was verified to be more suitable for the drought assessment. According to RCP 4.5, the frequency and intensity of droughts in the early future (2021~2060) were expected to increase and to be stronger. Particularly, severe droughts were predicted for a long time from 2022 to 2026, and from 2032 to 2039. Droughts were expected to decrease in the late future (2061~2100). From RCP 8.5, drought occurrences were predicted to increase, but the intensity of the droughts were expected to decrease in the future. As a result of evaluation of the frequencies of droughts by seasons, the region would be most affected by fall drought in the early future and by spring drought in the late future according to RCP 4.5. In the case of RCP 8.5, the seasonal effects were not clearly distinguished. These results suggest that droughts in the future do not have any tendency, but continue to occurr as in the past. Therefore, the measures and efforts to secure water resources and reinforcement of water supply facilities should be prepared to cope with droughts.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2019.05a
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• pp.150-150
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• 2019

The development of prolong and severe drought can directly impact on the environment, agriculture, economics and society of country. A lot of efforts have been made across worldwide in the planning, monitoring and mitigation of drought. Currently, different drought indices such as the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) are developed and most commonly used to monitor drought characteristics quantitatively. However, it will be very meaningful and essential to develop a more effective technique for assessment and monitoring of onset and end of drought. Therefore, in this study, the hidden Markov Bayesian classifier (MBC) was employed for the assessment of onset and end of meteorological drought classes. The results showed that the probabilities of different classes based on the MBC were quite suitable and can be employed to estimate onset and end of each class for meteorological droughts. The classification results of MBC were compared with SPI and with past studies which proved that the MBC was able to account accuracy in determining the accurate drought classes. For more performance evaluation of classification results confusion matrix was used to find accuracy and precision in predicting the classes and their results are also appropriate. The overall results indicate that the MBC was effective in predicating the onset and end of drought events and can utilized for monitoring and management of short-term drought risk.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.3-15
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• 2008

North Korea is one of the vulnerable countries facing the threat of a drought, so that it is unavoidable to experience fatal damage when drought is occurred, and it is necessary to improve the drought response capability of water resources systems. However, it is still difficult to find research efforts for drought characteristics and drought management in North Korea. This study is to quantify drought duration and magnitude and to analyze drought characteristics in North Korea. In order to quantitatively identify historical drought conditions and to evaluate their variability, drought indices are commonly used. In this study, drought indices including dry-day index, deciles of normal precipitation, Phillips drought index, standardized precipitation index and Palmer drought severity index are calculated and compared monthly using the weather data for the twenty one meteorological stations in North Korea. The indices compared with the drought damage records that have reported from 1990 to present to understand how the indices can explain the drought. A comparative study was also conducted to evaluate the relative severity of the significant droughts occurred during 2000 and 2001 which were reported as the worst drought in North Korea. Drought indices calculated from this study demonstrated that those can be the effective tools in quantitatively evaluating drought severity and measures of drought. Thus it is recommended the distributed trend of drought be considered when the plan or measures for drought in North Korea are established.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.66 no.3
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• pp.25-37
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• 2024

Global warming-induced drought inflicts significant socio-economic and environmental damage. In Korea, the persistent drought in the southern region since 2022 has severely affected water supplies, agriculture, forests, and ecosystems due to uneven precipitation distribution. To effectively prepare for and mitigate such impacts, it is imperative to develop proactive measures supported by early monitoring systems. In this study, we analyzed the spatiotemporal changes of multiple evapotranspiration-based drought indices, focusing on the flash drought event in the southern region in 2022. The indices included the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) considering precipitation and temperature, and the Evaporative Stress Index (ESI) based on satellite images. The Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and SPEI indices utilized temperature and precipitation data from meteorological observation stations, while the ESI index was based on satellite image data provided by the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite. Additionally, we utilized the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) provided by the North Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a supplementary index to ESI, enabling us to perform more effective drought monitoring. We compared the degree and extent of drought in the southern region through four drought indices, and analyzed the causes and effects of drought from various perspectives. Findings indicate that the ESI is more sensitive in detecting the timing and scope of drought, aligning closely with observed drought trends.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.735-742
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• 2019

Drought is a social phenomenon in which the degree of perception varies depending on the affected factors, and is defined as various relative concepts such as meteorological drought, hydrological drought, agricultural drought, and climatological drought. In this study, a comparative analysis of meteorological drought among variously defined droughts was conducted and the applicability of the drought index was examined by comparing the actual drought cases and the results of meteorological drought index analysis. In order to compare the drought index, we used standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), China-Z Index (CZI), Modified CZI (MCZI) and Z-Score Index Respectively. Four drought indices were used for the Taebaek and Sokcho areas. The drought index was analyzed using the meteorological data from 1986 to 2015 for a duration of 3 months. As a result of the analysis, the SPI drought index was analyzed to be highly reproducible for the case of drought with past limited water series. In the case of CZI and MCZI drought indices, the number of extreme dry occurrences is similar to that of the past cases, but the reproducibility is low for the actual drought years. In the case of ZSI drought index, it is analyzed that the number of occurrences and the comparison with the past cases are inferior in reproducibility. For the meteorological drought index using precipitation, it would be effective to use the SPI drought index with the highest reproducibility and the past drought case.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.62 no.2
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• pp.63-73
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• 2020

Drought is considered as a devastating hazard that causes serious agricultural, ecological and socio-economic impacts worldwide. Fundamentally, the drought can be defined as temporarily different levels of inadequate precipitation, soil moisture, and water supply relative to the long-term average conditions. From no unified definition of droughts, droughts have been divided into different severity level, i.e., moderate drought, severe drought, extreme drought and exceptional drought. The drought severity classification defined the ranges for each indicator for each dryness level. Because the ranges of the various indicators often don't coincide, the final drought category tends to be based on what the majority of the indicators show and on local observations. Evaporative Stress Index (ESI), a satellite-based drought index using the ratio of potential and actual evaporation, is being used as a index of the droughts occurring rapidly in a short period of time from studies showing a more sensitive and fast response to drought compared to Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), and Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). However, ESI is difficult to provide an objective drought assessment because it does not have clear drought severity classification criteria. In this study, U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), the standard for drought determination used in the United States, was applied to ESI, and the Percentile method was used to classify drought categories by severity. Regarding the actual 2017 drought event in South Korea, we compare the spatial distribution of drought area and understand the USDM-based ESI by comparing the results of Standardized Groundwater level Index (SGI) and drought impact information. These results demonstrated that the USDM-based ESI could be an effective tool to provide objective drought conditions to inform management decisions for drought policy.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.41-49
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• 2013

Drought risk assessment is usually performed qualitatively and quantitatively depending on the definition a drought. The meteorological drought indices have a limit of not being able to consider the hydrological components such as evapotranspiration, soil moisture and runoff, because it does not consider the water demand in paddies and water supply in reservoirs. Agricultural drought was defined as the reservoir storage shortage state that cannot satisfy water requirement from the paddy fields. The objectives of this study were to suggest improved agricultural drought risk assessment in order to evaluate of regional drought vulnerability and severity studied by using Reservoir Drought Index (RDI). The RDI is designed to simulate daily water balance between available water from agricultural reservoir and water requirement in paddies and is calculated with a frequency analysis of monthly water deficit based on water demand and water supply condition. The results indicated that RDI can be used to assess regional drought risk in agricultural perspective by comparing with the historical records of drought in 2012. It can be concluded that the RDI obtained good performance to reflect the historical drought events for both spatially and temporally. In addition, RDI is expected to contribute to determine the exact situation on the current drought condition for evaluating regional drought risk and to assist the effective drought-related decision making.

• Magazine of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.103-111
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• 1995

Drought index calculation based on the principal hydrological parameters, such as rainfall and reservoir storage, can estimate the duration and intensity of drought in irrigation reservoirs. It is difficult to build up a drought criteria since the conditions change variously by the reliability of rainfall. Because of the increasing water demands, it is urgent to prepare a generalized positive countermeasure to overcome drought. Water demands can at calculated but the estimation of drought characteristics, and the effective water management method can be established. The purpose of this study is to obtain a drought index and build up a data-base on the reservoir basins for establishing the fundamental hydrological data-base. This Index can observe the behavior of the WSI(Water Supply Index) and the component indices. The results summarized through this study are as follows. 1. WSI value of zero does not correspond to 100% in average due to the skewness in the probability distributions. 2. WSI is not a linear index; that is, given change in terms of water volume or percentage of average does not result in a proportional change on the WSI scale. 3. WSI is not always between the reservoir and the rainfall index in magnitude. This is only true if the component indices are of opposite sign. If they are of the same sign, the SWSI will often have a mangitude greater than either of the component indices. This is easily understood, because the concurrence of extreme values of the same sign for the two components is rarer than the occurrence of extreme values for either of the two components individually.