SERVIR Applied Sciences Team Principal Investigator (PI) Narendra Das and SERVIR-Mekong Co-Investigator Susantha Jayasinghe helped the Vietnam Academy of Water Resources (VAWR) put together a drought management plan for the Ninh Thuan province using the Regional Hydrological Extremes Assessment System (RHEAS). RHEAS uses Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) soil moisture as well as real time and forecasted rainfall amounts to generate rice and other crop yield estimates.
The tool helped the Ninh Thuan provincial government to provide “more accurate forecast bulletins so farmers can plan their water consumption more effectively for agriculture,” according to Lam Hung Son, Director of the Ninh Thuan Province Hydro Meteorology Station. This May, SERVIR began scaling up that effort and trained the national-level technical staff of VAWR to forecast the production of rice, a critical export for Vietnam.
