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Introduction
Natural disasters include drought, flood, earthquake, landslide, environmental degradation, mining disaster and cyclone, which cause devastating impacts on various activities/properties of the earth. Prediction and ability to manage such natural disasters is an integral part in the overall natural resource management of any nation. Recurrent drought phenomenon requires immediate attention for evolving long-term strategies for combating. Regional drought analysis and monitoring need to be carried out for each basin, which requires water related information frequently over a larger area. Remote Sensing is capable of supplying data more frequently covering wide areas, which are essential for macro-level studies. Then, one requires a spatial data-handling tool for analysis and display/dissemination of the information and outputs/results of scientific analysis to the users. Geographic Information System (GIS) comes in handy to fulfil such a requirement. Water resources and Agricultural engineers, Meteorologists, Economists, Sociologists and the farmers will be able to use GIS maps easily. In this study, an attempt was made to develop a Drought Information System (DIS) that provides tools to handle, store, process, distribute and interpret the water related data needed for assessing the spatial and temporal variation of drought severity.

Basic Terminologies
Data is defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) as a representation of facts, concepts or instructions in a formalized manner suitable for communication, interpretation or processing by human or by automatic means. Informations are data that have been called, analysed, integrated and presented on a selective basis and in a format that helps the user to gain a better understanding of what is going on. The types of information for planning and control organization activities are, strategic, tactical and operational. Generally, lower level user is concerned with operational information for decision making, while tactical and strategic information are useful to middle and top level users respectively for making decisions.

A database is a shared collection of interrelated data designed to meet the needs of end users. Data are stored separately so that they are independent of the programs that use them. Databases are organized for searching and fast information retrieval rather than for high volume production runs. New types of data items can be added dynamically at any time to provide good end user query and report generation facilities. Map is a representation of features of the earth drawn to scale. It is a tool of communication and it has been in use since the days of primitive man who had to move about constantly in search of food and shelter. It is a spatial component of database. It consists of points, lines, regions and surfaces that represent the earth features. Attribute data can be clipped into the points or regions with the help of GIS so that spatial and non-spatial attribute data can be viewed at a time that make the administrators more comfortable to plan various alternative scenarios.

Information System
Information system is needed for organising, assessing and evaluating a wide range of information and alternative strategies regarding the major issues. An information system is a model of a small finite subset of the real world. There is a correspondence between things inside the information system and those in the real world. Information in the system is part of a communication process among people. A participant in this process recognizes the occurrence of an event associated with the real world things and records it as an information system, so that someone else in the future can have access to this fact and interpret it.

Geographic Information System
GIS consists of the following five basic technical modules using which a Drought Information System (DIS) could be developed:

1. Data input and verification;
Data storage and database management;
Data output and presentation;
Data transformation; and
Interaction with the user.

Drought Information System
The information requirement for decision making during drought is diverse and spatial/temporal in nature. For efficient data management, the system should form a central facility for storage and retrieval of water resources related data. Development of a GIS based Drought Information System capable of providing the best available data to the local officials and other agencies through access by appropriate location to terminals becomes a necessity. It should possess the following characteristics:

• User friendly;
• Flexible;
• Robust;
• Extensible;
• Graphical User Interface;
• Comparability – comparing with past data / information;
• Locating areas; and
• Policy recommendation.

The objectives of a Drought Information System are:

• to develop user-friendly data bases helpful in the administration and management of water resources of a basin;
• to provide data and models to evaluate alternative water administration strategies, which can maximise utilisation of available resources in all types of hydrologic conditions;
• to be a functional system that can be used by decision makers and others, and be maintained and upgraded by concerned authorities;
• to have capabilities to accurately represent current and potential features of the basins; and
• to promote information sharing among Government agencies and water users.
• An attempt was made here to develop a Drought Information System (DIS) for Palar and Thamiravaruni river systems.