A REVIEW OF FUNDAMENTAL DROUGHT CONCEPTS, IMPACTS AND ANALYSES OF INDICES IN ASIAN CONTINENT

Abstract

Drought characterization is essential for drought risk and sustainable water resources management. Therefore, it is important to have a timely review of fundamental concepts of droughts, classification, types of drought indices and historical droughts. The impact of drought has increased on water availability at different scales all over the world. It is also important to correlate trends of drought as influenced by the climate variability of the present times. Drought frequency, duration and intensity in the major river basins have been increasing. The influencing hydro-meteorological parameters and their interaction are necessary in developing measures for mitigating impacts of droughts. The existing indices for each category of meteorological, hydrological, agricultural are reviewed and the current state of development is described in this study. Out of this review, this article draws conclusions where gaps for more focused research to be conducted in future.