Assessment of Drought Using Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI): A Case Study of Amreli District

Drought is a natural phenomenon which affects the human beings as well as animals. It also affects on the worlds economy, environment, industries and the community. therefore, drought hydrology has been receiving much attention. assessment of droughts can be helpful to implement drought mitigation strategies and measures, before they occur again. A wide variety of concepts are applied for drought assessment. In present study, SPI and RDI were developed for assessment of the drought for Amreli district. The SPI considers rainfall data as only variable, where RDI considers two hydro-meteorological variables (i. e. , rainfall and potential evapotranspiration) that affect the droughts. For the assessment of drought, rainfall and PET data of 35 years (i. e. , 1965-2000) were used of Amreli station. For calculating the indices DrinC software tool was used. Wet and dry period were compared using trend analysis of SPI-3, SPI-6, SPI-9 & SPI-12 and RDI-3, RDI-6, RDI-9 & RDI 12. it is better to use SPI and RDI of 12 months index for analysis of drought for this study. Overall, there was moderate drought situation in Amreli but the duration and intensity was above normal.