South Asia Drought Monitoring System

The South Asia Drought Monitoring System (SADMS) addresses the existing and potential challenges to drought management and provides a framework for proactive drought mitigation measures across South Asia. It provides national authorities with the maximum possible lead time to activate mitigation strategies and reduce vulnerability to drought.

It provides farmers, extension workers, and agriculture and water resources authorities with all the information needed to forecast, monitor and manage drought. Specifically, it provides seasonal, sub-seasonal and seven-day weather forecasts; monitoring tools to indicate when drought is present and, if so, the level of severity; and district-level agricultural contingency plans that can be put into action if the system indicates that triggers have been reached.

The system covers Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

SADMS incorporates information from multiple sources, such as real-time weather updates, open-access satellite data, and observed data.

Originally started in 2014, the next-generation platform was launched in 2022, in a close partnership with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

IWMI won the Geospatial World Excellence Award 2020 for its innovative work using remote-sensing technology to help nations monitor and mitigate the impacts of drought.  Since IWMI launched SADMS in 2014, the system has guided national, state and district-level authorities in India and Sri Lanka to take timely action to prepare for drought. This has helped to cushion smallholders, many of them poor, from the worst effects of prolonged dry spells.