Drought dynamics reveal a time gap between the onset of a drought event and the management of the drought emergency, but often this gap is too wide to effectively reduce the impacts. The Drought Observatory (https://drought.climateservices.it/en/) developed by CNR-IBIMET could fill this gap. It is an operational system providing Open, detailed and timely information and technical support to decision-makers, water authorities, researchers and stakeholders to enhance mitigation and adaptation plans. In particular, the coupled rainfall-based and satellite-derived monitoring system both provides multiple time scale occurrence and duration of drought, and allows the assessment of vegetation conditions at different spatio-temporal scales.
Thanks to the choice to deliver standardized information, data and tools fully open and free, the Drought Observatory can be easily used by several users, from decision makers, to water authorities, farmers and other researchers. Information, in fact, is delivered in formats suitable for different competences.
Moreover, the Spatial Data Infrastructure is conceived to also respond to specific requests, as detailed analysis in focus areas or integration with new drought indices.