Assessment of Meteorological Drought with Application of Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for Tripura, Northeast India

Drought is one of the major water-related natural hazards. Understanding the spatial and temporal variation of rainfall is of great importance in water resources planning and management as it is related with food security and management of scarce water resource, which becomes critical in case of drought events. The advent of GIS to produce spatially interpolated drought map helps the water managers to undertake appropriate measures in drought relief and prioritization of drought mitigation works. Limitation of literature on Tripura suggests that study of drought over Tripura could help in strengthening of mitigation planes and rationalization of disaster management policies. Hence, the present study is focused to investigate the drought persistence and severity in the Tripura state of India during the period 1980-2013, using Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Three time scale i.e., 3, 6 and 12 month time scales were opted for the study. Gridded monthly precipitation data distributed over the four districts of Tripura was used for drought analysis. Significant drought events were detected over the study area during the selected period. Annual analysis of SPI time series showed that the study area received the intense drought during the year 1985. Geospatial technique was used to generate the SPEI drought map for the year 1985.