The little amount of precipitation and anomaly higher temperature than the annual average over the same period resulted in meteorological drought which has affected 12 provinces in China. Accordingly, drought relief work has become an urgent national need. For giving full play to remote sensing technology in drought disaster monitoring, and providing a substantial support to drought relief work in a swift and effective manner, the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE) promptly started remote sensing monitoring of the disaster through making full use of our scientific and technological advantages

On the morning of February 6, Prof.Guo Huadong, Director-General of CEODE took the lead in the response to the drought through swiftly establishing a working group of remote sensing monitoring and data sharing which consisted of more than 50 scientific and technical researchers. Up to now, the first batch of satellite remote sensing data collected and processed by our experts has reached a total of 94 scenes. In terms of this mass information, our scientists made a substantial analysis with the focus on the degree of crop damaged and the water area changed and subsequently reported it to the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters on their demand,

February 8, CEODE staff involved in this issue formally set up the website 'drought remote sensing monitoring and data sharing platform' (http://159.226.224.4/zaiqing/index.html) in order to provide the relevant state departments and units with the free download access to the remote sensing data and disaster monitoring information. In addition, there have been so far three dispatches of field survey teams heading for Shandong, Henan and other key disaster areas respectively on a mission of field information collection and analysis, so as to acquire the first-hand corroboration of the remote sensing monitoring outcomes.