Prediction of Impending Drought Scenarios Based on Surface and Subsurface Parameters in a Selected Region of Tropical Queensland, Australia

Key Question Being Explored in This Insight:

Droughts occur in all climatic regions around the world costing a large expense to global economies. Reasonably accurate prediction of drought events helps water managers proper planning for utilization of limited water resources and distribution of available waters to different sectors and avoid catastrophic consequences.

View the page of: Bithin Datta

Institution: James Cook University

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This video video discusses the impact of a severe drought in Northern Queensland during 2013-2014, particularly its effects on water supply in Townsville and surrounding agricultural areas known for sugar cane farming. It highlights challenges in predicting drought conditions and explores drought indices such as the Palmer Drought Index and Standardized Precipitation Index, emphasizing their limitations in local-scale applications.

The speaker, a civil engineer with an interest in signal processing, proposes using artificial neural networks (ANN) for data analysis to identify relevant parameters that influence drought conditions based on past meteorological data and groundwater levels. The goal is to predict droughts three to six months in advance to allow for better resource management in urban and agricultural settings.

The study’s findings indicate that certain parameters, particularly soil moisture levels, significantly affect drought predictions. Results show improvements in prediction accuracy for groundwater levels and dam levels, although operational policies may influence dam level outputs. The speaker is satisfied with the initial findings but suggests that further research could enhance the model and expand its applications in various geographic and climatic conditions, including agriculture and mining sectors. Overall, the concept of using ANN for better drought prediction is presented as a promising avenue for future research.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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There was a severe drought in Northern Queensland,

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sometimes in 2013, 2014.

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And there was a severe effect on the ban water supply,

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the water availability for, the Townsville city.

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Then also this a very large agricultural area nearby Baran

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area where, you know, a lot of sugar cane farming.

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It is international known for that.

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And that requires a lot of water.

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And there, there of course,

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there is related issues of s increase in groundwater.

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'cause groundwater availability is also

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because some of the, most of the water

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for the agriculture use was coming from down water.

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And, and, and the real problem with droughts is

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that you don't really know you are into a drought,

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till you are already in a drought.

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So, so, so that, that is the,

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and then I looked at some of those, you know, models

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and this models were like, some, some

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of the index indices, you know, drought indices like,

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Palmer, drought index.

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Uh, there is something called,

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standardized precipitation index.

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And they look at a slightly larger scale.

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And you know, and also they're basically related

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to precipitation, that the rainfall and the try to model

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and, you know, the, the British, the rainfall levels

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or precipitation levels

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and like Palmer, the drought index

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includes some soil moisture, information also.

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But basically they're looking at a larger picture

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and not specifically trying to, predict if what happens

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to maybe the dam levels

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and how much of where the groundwater level will be.

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So, and this, this,

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all these indices al statistical analysis,

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and they look at the distribution, they try

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to fit a probability distribution

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and then they try to say, okay, what is the mean value

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or the actually standardized it.

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Some, some called tric, non-parametric mixture.

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And I thought that was not what we wanted.

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We wanted to see, whether you can predict in some way

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that what is happening in a smaller scale,

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maybe the city scale or regional scale.

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And then of course I had been working with,

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for some time signal processing.

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And although I'm a civil engineer,

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but I did work for a long time when I, I was in US

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for a long time also,

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I was very interested in the signal processing

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and its application because, so I thought

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that there is some signals in the nature

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which we might be able

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to recognize something from the signals that based on that,

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that the drought is coming

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and we might not know it, we may not physically know it,

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but then maybe this hidden the data and,

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and the question is, what type of data then?

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Then I thought maybe what can be relevant data?

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And then we did not know really.

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So what will be, so we know the drought is occurred, so,

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or maybe in the past also

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there are some records of droughts.

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The meteorological data is there

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and also the, the city council have got data on the dam

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levels, thing.

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So, so I thought, let us look at that.

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What are the parameters which affect this in the

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past has

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Affected the drought condition. So

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there, or there was something in the data that, you know,

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from which I can recognize

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or we can recognize, that actually is hidden,

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but we cannot see it for, you know,

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we cannot analyze ourselves humanly, but maybe lot of data

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and digging and our thing data mining

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and whether we can actually assert these patterns.

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And then I thought of course artificial neural network is,

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has been used quite a bit here

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and there it has been, there are improved portion of it,

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but that is one of the tools.

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So, but, but the idea is to extract as much information

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as we can from this data

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and then find out which parameters actually

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influence the drought conditions.

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But that we learned from the past that, you know, so,

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and then we are trying to various, various parameters,

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you know, and see that,

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that whether they're hidden in the data

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and then it could have in the past it could have

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actually predicted the drought.

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Okay. The also, I'll say

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that when I look at the literature there, I,

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I can mention some of the, some of the publications, others,

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and they looked at the, standardized,

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precipitation index, palmers index

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and also their various drought indexes.

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So, and there some are useful, some are not useful,

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somewhat accurate predictors not so,

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but then as a, that is a, that's

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takes a slightly more larger scale picture on a global scale

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and maybe the the,

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maybe the global circulation model might be a part of it.

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The southern OS oscillation index might be a part of it

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and it is maybe EL effects and so,

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and other things might be a part of it.

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I'm not saying that you can ignore them,

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but then they are slightly looking at a larger scale.

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So I, I thought that maybe first thing is that

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whatever data we have from the precipitation records

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and maybe the soil moisture levels

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localized in a very localized scale,

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which is available from maybe I think,

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meteorological, you know, grew

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and also geoscience in Australia.

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And some of this of course from the city council data

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for the dams, whether we can use this data

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and see what has happened in the past, how

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maybe everything might not be important.

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Maybe the precipitation six months ago might not be

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important, but maybe last three months might be important.

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Maybe the soil, but soil moisture level is not

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that important because that is something maybe

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result and not a cause.

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And then so, so those type of things.

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And of course in addition we also said maybe the sudden

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oxidation the index, I can include that.

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What is the predicted value or the existing value

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or in so values or something.

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These are some of the parameters whether we can use this all

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input, all this information.

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See in the past from the record in the past whether we could

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have actually predicted the TR drought conditions,

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but with the leak time of maybe three months to six months,

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I knew that we, we are doing it

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for more than six months probably it erroneous.

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But if you can know if drought is coming even six months

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earlier, you can plan for a lot of things

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because there a, there is is a supply side

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and also there's a, you know, demand site.

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So we can manage a demand site if you can predict it

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earlier, especially in urban settings,

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in agriculture settings.

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So I thought that that is very useful.

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But surprisingly what we found,

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and I actually used one of some of our B honor students

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and I things, so let us look at as a,

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I'm aware the some some application of A N was there

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before, but there, you know, so I think Desai

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and Misra, Misra and DE

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and all this environmental ecology, ecology modeling, some,

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some, some of the work has been done,

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but they're basically looking at reproducing the time series

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of the, some of this

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indices using this.

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So basically the learning from the data

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by looking at the time series of, you know, maybe SPI

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or something, a standardized

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specification index or something like that.

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But that was not what we wanted though it might look, appear

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to a similar in concept.

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But this was saying we look at, because Aiden

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and other things are other this you know,

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artificial email networks, they can actually have the

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ability to find out

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what are the parameters which are relevant,

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which are not relevant, what is important

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and what is not important.

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And then probably that based on

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that we can learn from the past

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and then use that in the future.

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That was the whole idea. And we found the soil master was a

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very surprising thing that once you into into the soil

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master, you know, palace from you know, the metallurgy

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and meteorology, the prediction was very good

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and we are surprised to see that that is

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what affected quite a bit

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because that was something hidden something in that data

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and that that gig lot of, lot of, so that is,

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so it was very successful in in my opinion,

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so in predicting not only the soil moisture level

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but also SPI also is we try to use this, this input,

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so predict the SPI also this this standardized per

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precipitation index and also the soil MAs level.

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Then you went to groundwater levels, you went to the,

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even the solidity because in coastal, like

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for solidity is important.

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If the groundwater uses more,

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the gradients comes towards from the sea to the,

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and the sun increases

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and based on the data whether we can fit the data.

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And then if you're successful, then also we have

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to look at the output.

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Also another output was the DAM level.

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So there's a dam nearby which is also dam features

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like tedious conditioning.

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The droughts is like 15% or 10%, which is no water to supply

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and whether, whether you can predict the dam level also.

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So it is the past data

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to check whether it is actually able to do it.

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But we did not assume that we assure

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that maybe we have the data for even when we're checking the

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past data, we check

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that we have the data only from six months below before that

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and you know then whether you can predict with the leak time

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of six months or three months, whatever.

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And again, I use the data which is the lead time

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of six months or three months

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and then see whether it can be predicted.

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So it is not that we are, you are learning from the data,

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but we are checking in a the real time, okay,

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the major findings is that it this the a n

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and also maybe it's improvement improved, you know, some

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of the also because now a lot

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of advancements are going on is able

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to extract the information, the pattern

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that exists in the nature.

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That is what I feel though it is in a digital form.

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So it can actually detect some

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of the patterns which might be

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useful in predicting the future.

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And that is what and ally and you know, in terms of numbers

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and these are the, these are hidden patterns that there

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and what we cannot do as human beings though it is,

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you know, we can use intuition or something,

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but a n can do that in much more effective way.

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But a n is not the only, I mean it can be something else

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because the concept come is a signal coming

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and what, what are the inputs that affecting the signals

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and how they actually modified

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and how do you can predict what will be the next.

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So we looked at lead time of three months, six months,

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six months, six months and see what they tested.

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And then with the independent set of data,

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we said whether it is actually able to predict the drought.

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That is what it is. And not only that one, we are very,

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very moral or is very satisfactory prediction

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of groundwater levels, which is very important.

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A you went to the groundwater ty levels

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during the droughts and suddenly SPI was very good.

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So all this, but we also use sudden O observation index

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and other things are many factors,

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but also you, we tried to break the SPI that is the,

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the the standardized precipitation index which looks,

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looks at the rainfall statistic, but I use that.

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Then once we have break that we use that

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as a input to these models.

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Okay. So that information was actually, actually created

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and then use input and so

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therefore our prediction in my, in very,

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very good better than anything that we have body,

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but also the dam levels.

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But again, the dam level prediction is

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that some operation policy comes with the picture.

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So, but there is a black box element there

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because the operation policy

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otherwise might be actually distorting it somewhere,

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but you droughts in other where basically you try to

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release how much is available.

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So, so they're kind of, you know, related and quite close.

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So therefore we are able to actually pay the,

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the dime levels also.

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So the whole idea is that it'll improve

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and also we can use it in some other regions also.

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We can develop it for other region,

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not only in these localities,

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some are similar ones, but we have to study that.

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And also in mining areas we can use it for,

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because mine has a lot of,

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because they can actually, you can

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and some industries which they can predict

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how much water might be available

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or there might drought coming in.

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I think it's very, very, some

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of these mining people also picked up some of these,

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you know, work and then they thought it's very useful.

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But I am very satisfied with the results.

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Oh this our, in my opinion what we did was preliminary,

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we have have the proof of concept.

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That is what we've developed.

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So this application with proof of concept

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and I think that is satisfactory, quite satisfactory.

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It can do the job but it has to be extended

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and maybe some other parameters have to, you know, utilized,

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maybe it should be applied in some other regions

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with other geographic regions,

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with other climatic climatic conditions.

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And also basically I want to see an application where the,

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for agriculture, you know how to plan

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The irrigation when you have some

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or in urban areas,

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how do you risk put the restrictions earlier so

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that you can control the demand sites.

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But even, even, you know, so mining

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and is of course this is,

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and there even hydrogen, you know,

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nowadays energy production is there.

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So a lot of water demand

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and we need to be actually affected.

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If your drought is impending drought is there.

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So, so I think there are very various applications possible,

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but the study is not complete.

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Uh, of course I want to carry it forward.

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I hope I get a chance to do that.

Quick Answers

Predicting Drought Impacts in Queensland Agriculture

00:00:00 - There was a severe drought in Northern Queensland, sometimes in 2013, 2014. And there was a severe effect on the ban water supply, the water availability for, the Townsville city. Then also this a very large agricultural area nearby Baran area where, you know, a lot of sugar cane farming. It is international known for that. And that requires a lot of water. And there, there of course, there is related issues of s increase in groundwater.
00:00:35 - because some of the, most of the water for the agriculture use was coming from down water. And, and, and the real problem with droughts is that you don't really know you are into a drought, till you are already in a drought. So, so, so that, that is the, and then I looked at some of those, you know, models and this models were like, some, some of the index indices, you know, drought indices like, Palmer, drought index. there is something called, standardized precipitation index.
00:01:07 - And you know, and also they're basically related to precipitation, that the rainfall and the try to model and, you know, the, the British, the rainfall levels or precipitation levels and like Palmer, the drought index includes some soil moisture, information also. But basically they're looking at a larger picture and not specifically trying to, predict if what happens to maybe the dam levels and how much of where the groundwater level will be.
00:01:38 - all these indices al statistical analysis, and they look at the distribution, they try to fit a probability distribution and then they try to say, okay, what is the mean value or the actually standardized it. Some, some called tric, non-parametric mixture. And I thought that was not what we wanted. We wanted to see, whether you can predict in some way that what is happening in a smaller scale, maybe the city scale or regional scale. And then of course I had been working with, for some time signal processing. And although I'm a civil engineer, but I did work for a long time when I, I was in US
00:02:11 - I was very interested in the signal processing and its application because, so I thought that there is some signals in the nature which we might be able to recognize something from the signals that based on that, that the drought is coming and we might not know it, we may not physically know it, but then maybe this hidden the data and, and the question is, what type of data then? Then I thought maybe what can be relevant data? And then we did not know really. So what will be, so we know the drought is occurred, so,
00:02:42 - there are some records of droughts. The meteorological data is there and also the, the city council have got data on the dam levels, thing. So, so I thought, let us look at that. What are the parameters which affect this in the past has Affected the drought condition. So there, or there was something in the data that, you know, from which I can recognize or we can recognize, that actually is hidden, but we cannot see it for, you know, we cannot analyze ourselves humanly, but maybe lot of data and digging and our thing data mining

Predicting Drought Conditions Using Neural Networks

00:03:16 - And then I thought of course artificial neural network is, has been used quite a bit here and there it has been, there are improved portion of it, but that is one of the tools. So, but, but the idea is to extract as much information as we can from this data and then find out which parameters actually influence the drought conditions. But that we learned from the past that, you know, so, and then we are trying to various, various parameters,
00:03:44 - that whether they're hidden in the data and then it could have in the past it could have actually predicted the drought. Okay. The also, I'll say that when I look at the literature there, I, I can mention some of the, some of the publications, others, and they looked at the, standardized, precipitation index, palmers index and also their various drought indexes. So, and there some are useful, some are not useful, somewhat accurate predictors not so, but then as a, that is a, that's takes a slightly more larger scale picture on a global scale
00:04:19 - maybe the global circulation model might be a part of it. The southern OS oscillation index might be a part of it and it is maybe EL effects and so, and other things might be a part of it. I'm not saying that you can ignore them, but then they are slightly looking at a larger scale. So I, I thought that maybe first thing is that whatever data we have from the precipitation records and maybe the soil moisture levels localized in a very localized scale, which is available from maybe I think,
00:04:51 - and also geoscience in Australia. And some of this of course from the city council data for the dams, whether we can use this data and see what has happened in the past, how maybe everything might not be important. Maybe the precipitation six months ago might not be important, but maybe last three months might be important. Maybe the soil, but soil moisture level is not that important because that is something maybe result and not a cause. And then so, so those type of things.
00:05:21 - oxidation the index, I can include that. What is the predicted value or the existing value or in so values or something. These are some of the parameters whether we can use this all input, all this information. See in the past from the record in the past whether we could have actually predicted the TR drought conditions, but with the leak time of maybe three months to six months, I knew that we, we are doing it for more than six months probably it erroneous. But if you can know if drought is coming even six months
00:05:52 - because there a, there is is a supply side and also there's a, you know, demand site. So we can manage a demand site if you can predict it earlier, especially in urban settings, in agriculture settings. So I thought that that is very useful. But surprisingly what we found, and I actually used one of some of our B honor students and I things, so let us look at as a, I'm aware the some some application of A N was there before, but there, you know, so I think Desai and Misra, Misra and DE

Predicting Drought Through Data Analysis Techniques

00:06:23 - some, some of the work has been done, but they're basically looking at reproducing the time series of the, some of this indices using this. So basically the learning from the data by looking at the time series of, you know, maybe SPI or something, a standardized specification index or something like that. But that was not what we wanted though it might look, appear to a similar in concept. But this was saying we look at, because Aiden and other things are other this you know,
00:06:53 - ability to find out what are the parameters which are relevant, which are not relevant, what is important and what is not important. And then probably that based on that we can learn from the past and then use that in the future. That was the whole idea. And we found the soil master was a very surprising thing that once you into into the soil master, you know, palace from you know, the metallurgy and meteorology, the prediction was very good and we are surprised to see that that is what affected quite a bit because that was something hidden something in that data
00:07:25 - so it was very successful in in my opinion, so in predicting not only the soil moisture level but also SPI also is we try to use this, this input, so predict the SPI also this this standardized per precipitation index and also the soil MAs level. Then you went to groundwater levels, you went to the, even the solidity because in coastal, like for solidity is important. If the groundwater uses more, the gradients comes towards from the sea to the,
00:07:55 - and based on the data whether we can fit the data. And then if you're successful, then also we have to look at the output. Also another output was the DAM level. So there's a dam nearby which is also dam features like tedious conditioning. The droughts is like 15% or 10%, which is no water to supply and whether, whether you can predict the dam level also. So it is the past data to check whether it is actually able to do it. But we did not assume that we assure that maybe we have the data for even when we're checking the
00:08:25 - that we have the data only from six months below before that and you know then whether you can predict with the leak time of six months or three months, whatever. And again, I use the data which is the lead time of six months or three months and then see whether it can be predicted. So it is not that we are, you are learning from the data, but we are checking in a the real time, okay, the major findings is that it this the a n and also maybe it's improvement improved, you know, some of the also because now a lot of advancements are going on is able to extract the information, the pattern
00:08:56 - That is what I feel though it is in a digital form. So it can actually detect some of the patterns which might be useful in predicting the future. And that is what and ally and you know, in terms of numbers and these are the, these are hidden patterns that there and what we cannot do as human beings though it is, you know, we can use intuition or something, but a n can do that in much more effective way. But a n is not the only, I mean it can be something else because the concept come is a signal coming and what, what are the inputs that affecting the signals

Predicting Drought and Groundwater Levels Efficiently

00:09:28 - and how do you can predict what will be the next. So we looked at lead time of three months, six months, six months, six months and see what they tested. And then with the independent set of data, we said whether it is actually able to predict the drought. That is what it is. And not only that one, we are very, very moral or is very satisfactory prediction of groundwater levels, which is very important. A you went to the groundwater ty levels during the droughts and suddenly SPI was very good.
00:10:01 - and other things are many factors, but also you, we tried to break the SPI that is the, the the standardized precipitation index which looks, looks at the rainfall statistic, but I use that. Then once we have break that we use that as a input to these models. Okay. So that information was actually, actually created and then use input and so therefore our prediction in my, in very, very good better than anything that we have body, but also the dam levels. But again, the dam level prediction is
00:10:32 - So, but there is a black box element there because the operation policy otherwise might be actually distorting it somewhere, but you droughts in other where basically you try to release how much is available. So, so they're kind of, you know, related and quite close. So therefore we are able to actually pay the, the dime levels also. So the whole idea is that it'll improve and also we can use it in some other regions also. We can develop it for other region, not only in these localities,
00:11:03 - And also in mining areas we can use it for, because mine has a lot of, because they can actually, you can and some industries which they can predict how much water might be available or there might drought coming in. I think it's very, very, some of these mining people also picked up some of these, you know, work and then they thought it's very useful. But I am very satisfied with the results. this our, in my opinion what we did was preliminary, we have have the proof of concept. That is what we've developed. So this application with proof of concept
00:11:35 - It can do the job but it has to be extended and maybe some other parameters have to, you know, utilized, maybe it should be applied in some other regions with other geographic regions, with other climatic climatic conditions. And also basically I want to see an application where the, for agriculture, you know how to plan The irrigation when you have some or in urban areas, how do you risk put the restrictions earlier so that you can control the demand sites.
00:12:23 - and is of course this is, and there even hydrogen, you know, nowadays energy production is there. So a lot of water demand and we need to be actually affected. If your drought is impending drought is there. So, so I think there are very various applications possible, but the study is not complete. of course I want to carry it forward. I hope I get a chance to do that.

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