Co-developing a global drought monitoring and forecasting service and lessons learned: eliciting ideal functionalities in the face of real-world implementation limitations

Drought and flood monitoring and forecasting services enable the integration of climate information in decision-making processes, thus supporting successful adaptation, from disaster risk reduction to long-term policy and planning worldwide. While state-of-the-art model-based early warning systems that simulate future floods and droughts at various temporal and spatial scales have been developed in the academic fields, it has proven a challenge to translate the existing knowledge into an operational system. Inherent challenges include a) setting up the appropriate technical requirements, operational workflows, and new IT infrastructure, while b) conducting a user-centric co-development that yields c) scientifically sound products with regard to the model information basis, with d) a continuous financing of operations and scientific updates. However, while transdisciplinary co-development with end users supports utilization, the final provided service will be a balance with respect to the technical and scientific limitations. In particular, technical limitations in the context of a project may lead to less-than-optimal implementation of stakeholder needs, even if those had been scientifically feasible, and therefore may lead to losing actually-elicited, potentially valuable stakeholder knowledge after the process finishes.

This study describes and evaluates the steps and methods undertaken to participatorily co-develop an operational, multi-sectoral global drought hazard forecasting system (in the frame of the OUTLAST project) through a transdisciplinary process of three workshops with participating end users and experts from two focus regions, Lake Victoria Basin, Africa, and Central Asia, respectively. This comprised the co-production of (i) the user-relevant sectoral drought hazard indicators, (ii) the optimal representation with uncertainty information in spatial and temporal visualizations, and (iii) interface functionalities to optimize user utilization of the hazard information. We discuss lessons learned with a particular focus on identified challenges and compromises regarding balancing of the above limitations during the co-development.

The resulting global OUTLAST near real-time monitoring and seasonal forecasts will be operationally provided and freely accessible via the Hydrological Status and Outlook System (HydroSOS) portal hosted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Regarding indicators, we found that the extent of co-design was necessarily limited with a dominating research-lead because of the complexity found in droughts, unlike e.g. in floods. Regarding interface functionalities and user utilization, the technical implementation was limited by sub-optimal funding and a requirement to provide hydrological information homogeneously across all HydroSOS services, and a clear division between an ideal and technically limited version by the IT hosting requirements could be identified. This allowed subsequent planning to provide access to additional features on a potential secondary subportal. We therefore emphasize the importance of 1) eliciting the information on ideal implementation even in the face of current project-bound limitations (i.e., technical or shifting commitment); so that, while 2) promoting wide utilization, the limited functionality can be implemented where public dissemination is most prominent (at WMO level), it is equally important to also 3) plan for alternative approaches to provide more of the ideal features, and to 4) perpetuate the knowledge drawn from the participatory process to ensure the possibility for future implementations beyond the present limitations.