Integrated System of Early Warning, Monitoring and Drought Risk Analysis for Romania

Drought is one of the major natural calamities causing important damages to natural vegetation, agriculture and the society. The climate changes scenarios forecast the increase and intensification of extreme phenomena all over the globe. Romania is one of the most vulnerable countries, and has 7 million hectares located within areas affected by the risk of desertification. An integrated system for early warning, monitoring and analysis of the drought risk on the Romanian territory, combining satellite information with field data and numerical models results, was created. The system is user-friendly, flexible, robust, extensible, with a user graphical interface and compatible with other databases. The instruments implemented within the system ensure user access, transformation and viewing of the main data, forecasts, warnings and satellite images. The system includes a reliable configuration for the reception/pre-processing of satellite MSG images in real time at each 15 minuts. NOAA AVHRR, MODIS, MERIS, LANDSAT, MSG, SPOT, ENVISAT and TerraSAR images are acquired from international data bases (EOS NASA Gateway, KALIDEOS, European Space data base, JRC). The satellite image processing include GIS-integrated and combined with information regarding the FAO-LCCS land coverage/use, meteorological forecasts and warnings and agricultural culture data.