The State of the Art of NIDIS Drought Portal, drought.gov

With drought impacts measured in the single & even 10s of billions of dollars in the United States with implications that can go well beyond such measures, the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) was Congressionally mandated to communicate timely drought data and information to decision-makers across federal, tribal, state, and local government, the private sector, and the public. As the federal government’s authoritative drought information website, the U.S. Drought Portal (drought.gov) helps fulfill this mandate, serving as a clearinghouse for drought products, forecasts, indices, services, and information at the local, county, state, regional, watershed, national, and global levels. In operation since 2007, the website as an ecosystem has emerged and evolved through NIDIS programmatic requirements; user surveys and experiential journey mapping; website performance analytics; internal and external teaming and collaborations; vast data ingest, processing, and service through GIS, Python and R processing, geospatial data formats, and on-prem as well as cloud services; and front end web service and development. We will take the audience through this living, breathing evolution touching upon each of these components, best practices and lessons learned along the way, and emergent directions that should inform, engage, and excite formal stakeholders and the public alike.