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2018: Using Data to Boost Drought Resilience in the Caribbean
From 2013 to 2016, the Caribbean region endured its worst drought in over half a century. To help farmers in the Dominican Republic cope with the changing climate, researchers will design and deploy low-cost soil moisture and plant stress-monitoring sensors that transmit information to a cloud-based computing platform. This technology will enable improved near-term forecasts of drought conditions, alerting farmers to drought hazards by text message. Researchers will conduct surveys to understand the barriers to weather and climate data, and assess the efficacy of the new tools.
Investigators: Toby Ault, Shorna Allred, Abraham Stroock