Types of Indices

• Meteorology indices
• Soil Moisture Indices
• Hydrology indices
• Remote Sensing Indices
• Composite or Model indices
 Meteorology Indices
• Aridity Anomaly Index (AAI)
• Deciles
• Keetch–Byram Drought Index (KBDI)
• Percent of Normal Precipitation
• Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)
• Weighted Anomaly Standardized Precipitation (WASP)
• Aridity Index (AI)
• China Z Index (CZI)
• Crop Moisture Index (CMI)
• Drought Area Index (DAI)
• Drought Reconnaissance Index(DRI)
• Effective Drought Index (EDI)
• NOAA Drought Index (NDI)
• Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI)
• Palmer Z Index
• Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI)
• Standardized Precipitation
• Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI)
Soil Moisture Indices
• Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA)
• Evapotranspiration Deficit Index (ETDI)
• Soil Moisture Deficit Index (SMDI)
• Soil Water Storage (SWS)
Hydrology Indices
• Palmer Hydrological Drought Severity Index (PHDI)
• Standardized Reservoir Supply Index (SRSI)
• Standardized Streamflow Index (SSFI)
• Standardized Water-level Index (SWI)
• Streamflow Drought Index (SDI)
• Surface Water Supply Index (SWSI)
• Aggregate Dryness Index (ADI)
• Standardized Snowmelt and Rain Index (SMRI)
Remote Sensing Indices
• Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI)
• Evaporative Stress Index (ESI)
• Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)
• Temperature Condition Index (TCI)
• Vegetation Condition Index (VCI)
• Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI)
• Vegetation Health Index (VHI)
• Water Requirement Satisfaction Index (WRSI and Geo-spatial WRSI)
• Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Land Surface Water Index
(LSWI)
• Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI)
Composite or Model indices
• Combined Drought Indicator (CDI)
• Global Integrated Drought Monitoring and Prediction System
(GIDMaPS)
• Multivariate Standardized Drought Index (MSDI)
• United States Drought Monitor (USDM)
RAINFALL BASED
INDICES
Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI)
• The SPI index was designed by McKee et al to quantify the precipitation deficit. The
calculation of the SPI index in any place is based on the precipitation history over a long
period corresponding to the period of time studied.
• The fundamental strength of SPI is that it can be calculated for a variety of time scales (1,
3, 6, 12, 24 & 48 months). This versatility allows SPI to monitor short-term water
supplies, such as soil moisture, which is important for agricultural production, and long-
term water resources, such as groundwater supplies, stream flow, lake and reservoir
levels.
• To calculate the SPI, a long-term precipitation record at the desired station is first fitted to
a probability distribution (e.g. gamma distribution), which is then transformed into a
normal distribution so that the mean SPI is zero.
• It is expressed mathematically as follows:
• This index help to distinguish dry years from wet years or deficit years from surplus years. A
drought occurs when the SPI is consecutively negative and its value reaches an intensity of -1 or
less and ends when the SPI becomes positive. A classification of the drought is carried out
according to the values of the SPI (Table 3).
Rainfall Deviation:
• The rainfall deviation (RFdev) which is expressed in percentage terms
is calculated as below:
• RFdev = {(RFi – RFn)/RFn}*100
• Where RFi is current rainfall for a comparable period (in mm) and RFn
is the normal rainfall (at least 30 years average) for the same period
(in mm). The IMD classification of rainfall deviation is given in Table
Rainfall Deciles Index
• A simple meteorological drought index is the Rainfall Deciles, in which the precipitation totals for
the preceding three months are ranked against climatologic records.
• If the sum falls within the lowest decile of the historical distribution of 3-month totals (Table 1),
then the region is considered to be under drought conditions (Kininmonth et al., 2000).
• The drought ends when: (i) the precipitation measured during the past month already places the 3-
month total in or above the fourth decile, or (ii) the precipitation total for the past three months is
in or above the eighth decile.
• The first decile is the precipitation amount not exceeded by the lowest 10% of the precipitation
occurrences.
• The second decile is the precipitation amount not exceeded by the lowest 20% of occurrences.
These deciles continue until the rainfall amount identified by the tenth decile is the largest
precipitation amount within the long-term record.
• By definition, the fifth decile is the median, and it is the precipitation amount not exceeded by 50%
of the occurrences over the period of record.
• The deciles are grouped into five classifications. Table 1 presents the classification of drought
conditions according to deciles.
EDI (Effective Drought Index)
• The EDI is calculated in daily time step and its values are standardized in a similar way with that for
calculating SPI values. The EDI was originally developed by Byun and Wilhite (1999) to overcome some
limitations of other indices. The value of EDI generally ranges from –2.5 to 2.5. Near normal conditions are
indicated when EDI ranges from –1.0 to 1.0, while extreme drought conditions are indicated when EDI is
less than or equal to –2.0. Effective precipitation should be calculated firstly before obtaining the EDI .

• where EPi is the effective precipitation (mm), which represents the valid accumulations of
precipitation; Pm is the precipitation over the previous m days (mm); and n is the duration of the
preceding period (day). When i=365, then EP365 shows available precipitation accumulated over
365 days. More details about the calculation of EDI can be found in Byun and Wilhite (1999).
Satellite
based
Index
ENHANCED VEGETATION INDEX (EVI)
• The Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) is calculated similarly as the NDVI. However, the EVI does
not become saturated in tropical rainforests and other areas with large amounts of chlorophyll as
the NDVI. EVI is more responsive towards canopy structural differences, including leaf area index
(LAI), canopy type, plan physiognomy, and canopy architecture (Huete et al., 2002). The
calculation of EVI is done as follows:

• Where L is the canopy background, C1 and C2 are the coefficients of the aerosol resistance term
to correct the aerosol influences in the red band by using the blue band. Similar to NDVI, EVI
shows the vigour in vegetation.
SOIL MOISTURE BASED
INDICES
Percent Available Soil Moisture (PASM)
• PASM is derived from observed moisture sensor data or sample soil-water balance model
following the ‘bucket approach’ and using the Following formula:
• PASM = [(SMw - PWP) / (FC - PWP)] * 100
• Where SMw is the weekly calculated volumetric soil moisture (vol/vol) for the current week, FC is
the field capacity of soil (vol/vol) and PWP is the permanent wilting point of the soil (vol/vol). The
PASM based classification is given in Table 3.4.
Moisture Adequacy Index (MAI)
• Moisture Adequacy Index (MAI) is also based on a calculation of weekly soil water
balance, and is equal to the ratio (expressed as a percentage) of Actual Evapo-
transpiration (AET) to the Potential/ Reference Evapo-transpiration (PET or RET)
following a soil–water balancing approach during different phenological stages of
a crop. Thus, MAI is obtained by using the following equation:
• MAI = [AET/PET] * 100
Hydrologic
al Indices
Reservoir Storage Index (RSI)
• The availability of water in reservoirs can act as an effective foil against drought.
The reservoir storage status derived from percentage of storage deficit vis-à-vis
long term averages can provide an indication of drought (Table 3.6).
Groundwater Drought Index (GWDI)
• The rate of depletion of groundwater table is useful for making an
assessment of groundwater availability for agriculture and drinking
water supply purposes.
• The monthly groundwater (GW) table records are required for a
minimum period of 10 years for computation of mean value of
monthly ground water depletion rate. When rate of depletion of
groundwater table in a given month/period is more than the
corresponding mean value then it is an indication of water deficit. The
computation procedure for Ground Water Drought Index (GWDI) is as
follows:
Where,
• GWDIij = Groundwater Drought Index for ith month and jth year.
• MGWDj = Mean depth to groundwater table below surface (in meter)
• GWDij = Depth to groundwater table in ith month and jth year (in meter).
• GWDimax = Maximum depth to groundwater table in ith month in available data set for n number
of years (in meter).
• i = 1, 2, 3, 4, …………, 12. j = 1, 2, 3, …………., n. n = total numbers of years for which monthly
groundwater records are used.
Stream-Flow Drought Index (SFDI)
• The severity of drought event would be classified using a stream flow drought index (SFDI)
defined as a function of :
i. the ratio of deficit flow volume to corresponding volume at the truncation levels; and
ii. the ratio of duration of deficit flow to the maximum expected duration of the independent
stream flow drought event.

Where,
Vd = deficit flow volume,
VTL = corresponding flow volume expected at TL flow
de = duration of independent drought event, and
dm = maximum duration of an independent drought event (=365 days).