A Comparative Assessment of Meteorological Drought Indices for the Baribo Basin (Cambodia)

Drought is considered a looming catastrophe for socioeconomic development. In recent decades, Cambodia has been affected by increased severity of drought. Since drought is a slowly evolving natural disaster, its negative impacts can be mitigated through monitoring and characterizing drought levels by assimilating data from one or several indicators into a single numerical index which is more readily usable than raw indicator data. This study performed a comparative assessment of three meteorological drought indices including Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Effective Drought Index (EDI), and Percent of Normal Precipitation (PNP) for the Baribo basin in Cambodia. The SPI, EDI, and PNP are generally able to be used for assessing drought severity and duration but with a slight difference in performance. The SPI is considered the best index for capturing the extreme and severe drought events, while the EDI is a cautious index for assessing drought duration. The Baribo and Kraing Ponley sub-basins located in the middle and southern parts of the entire Baribo are considered the drought-prone area.