FYI to those of you who may have interest. Subject: FW: Drought conference in West Lafayette Mark your calendars, because on June 21-22, 2011 Purdue will be hosting….. Symposium on Data-Driven Approaches to Droughts (DDAD2011), June 21-22, 2011 Overview A diverse team of researchers, including the DRINET project team, will host a symposium focusing on data-driven approaches for characterizing, understanding and modeling droughts. The symposium will feature invited speakers from various scientific domains, industry and other national scale data related projects, as well as poster presentations and panel discussions. It will be held from June 21-22, 2011 at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. This symposium is sponsored by the National Science Foundation through the Office of Cyberinfrastructure and the Hydrological Sciences Division, and is in partnership with EWRI (Environmental & Water Resources Institute of ASCE) and US Department of Agriculture - National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA). Download symposium flyer<https://drinet.hubzero.org/resources/159/download/drinet_sym_flyer_4-4-11.pdf> Website: https://drinet.hubzero.org/symposiuminfo Background Deep societal and economic impacts from drought conditions mandate a better understanding of how droughts are characterized and how drought mitigation strategies are designed. Yet, droughts continue to be one of the most difficult natural disasters to model. A variety of datasets and human impressions are currently documented within drought maps such as the US Drought Monitor. The data come from different domains: satellite data for soil and vegetation state, weather and climatic data including precipitation, temperature, wind trajectories and their anomalies, and hydrological data such as water levels in reservoirs and streams. Additionally, qualitative information related to analogous years (e.g., El Nino states), on ground impacts, timing of droughts, and regional vulnerability or resilience are also factored into the descriptions of the drought states. Many questions remain about characterizing drought risk in different settings and applications, and on how current drought maps and datasets can be paired with other data sources to develop new understanding about drought triggers and impacts. Linkages between droughts and agriculture, air quality, water quality, human health, urbanization, etc. need to be established, and data requirements for determining the economic and societal impacts need to be better understood. This symposium will serve as a forum for researchers and stakeholders to interact and exchange current and emerging techniques for drought characterization, along with methods for local and regional data collection, compilation, and format standardization. This symposium will attract studies that demonstrate how the new knowledge base created from the cyberinfrastructure for data collection, when combined with visualization techniques, leads to improved understanding and practical applications. It will feature keynote speakers, a series of presentations, posters, and panel discussions. Program Committee Carol Song <mailto:carolxsong@purdue.edu> (Rosen Center for Advanced Computing) Daniel <mailto:aliaga@cs.purdue.edu> Aliaga (Department of Computer Science) Jacob Carlson<mailto:jrcarlso@purdue.edu> (Libraries, Distributed Data Curation Center) Indrajeet<mailto:ichaubey@purdue.edu> <mailto:ichaubey@purdue.edu> Chaubey (Agricultural & Biological Engineering/Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) Rao<mailto:govind@purdue.edu> S. <mailto:govind@purdue.edu> Govindaraju (Civil Engineering Department) Christoph<mailto:cmh@cs.purdue.edu> Hoffmann<mailto:cmh@cs.purdue.edu> (Department of Computer Science) Dev <mailto:dniyogi@purdue.edu> Niyogi (Agronomy Department and Indiana State Climatologist) Lan<mailto:lanzhao@purdue.edu> Zhao<mailto:lanzhao@purdue.edu> (Rosen Center for Advanced Computing) Meeting Coordinator Kay Hunt<mailto:kay@purdue.edu> (Rosen Center for Advanced Computing)