Drought Calculations using Excel

In this course, we will use excel to calculate some drought indices. The excel file used in the lesson can also be downloaded here, so you can follow along with the tutorial yourself. In this tutorial, both the technical steps with the excel functions are explained, as well as what the numbers mean. In addition, we’ll visualise a bit by making some graphs in excel.

STUDENT REQUIREMENTS

It is highly recommended to first follow the Drought Disaster Risks course as in this coure, we will calculate one of the standardized indices that is discussed in there.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The learning goals of this course are:

• To get acquinted with some useful excel functionalities (simple and more advanced functions, pivot tables)
• To understand and be able to calculate standardized drought indices from hydro-meteorological data
• To be able to visualise data in excel and infer from these graphs what the data tells you

ABOUT INSTRUCTOR

Dr. Hans de Moel is an assistant professor in the field of water and climate risks at the Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses on natural hazard risk management, climate change and adaptation.

Certification

This course is a part of the certificate program named ‘WE are Water Eduction (Myanmar)’. Learn more about the program here.