User-oriented agricultural drought information cluster

Agricultural droughts can be perceived in four forms - drought data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. For better understanding, mitigation and harness of drought, it is necessary to extract “raw” drought information into human-perceivable data (e.g., remotely sensed data) and from which to discover patterns and form knowledge. This article explores advantages of geospatial Web services in providing on-demand agricultural drought analysis and equipping users from various domains (including drought experts, decision-makers and farmers) with information, knowledge and even wisdom needed in the process of agricultural drought monitoring, assessment and management. Various Web services are established to support drought analysis and decision-making for the general public. The potential of Web services in automating geospatial knowledge discovery and dissemination within the Big Data era is also illustrated here.