Knowledge Discovery from Satellite Images for Drought Monitoring in Food Insecure Areas

Attributed to climatic change and uncertainty of weather conditions, drought has become a recurrent phenomenon. It is manifested by erratic and uncertain rainfall distribution in rainfall dependent farming areas. The hitherto methods of monitoring drought employed conventional methods that rely on availability of metrological data. The objectives of this research were to: 1) identify the critical factors for efficiently implementing geo-spatial information for drought monitoring, 2) develop a new approach for extracting knowledge from satellite imageries for real time drought monitoring in food insecure areas, and 3) validate and calibrate the new approach for national and regional applications. For this research, satellite data from MSG and NOAA AVHRR were used. The preliminary results confirmed that real time MSG satellite data can be used for monitoring drought in food insecure areas. The output of this research helps decision makers in taking the appropriate actions in time for saving millions of lives in drought affected areas using advanced satellite technology.