How to calculate Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) using remote sensing or GIS software or tool

[saurabh singh]

Hi

I am Saurabh Singh, a research scholar, I am running through a big challenge to calculate Standard Precipitation Index (SPI) using raster images of precipitation(data source: ftp://ftp.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/fews/fewsdata/africa/rfe2/geotiff).

Is someone have any idea about GIS or remote sensing software or freely available tool or some code in IDL which could calculate SPI on rater images?

Please help me to solve this problem.

Thanks

[Adam Atia]

Hi Saurabh,

Although this is not my specialty, perhaps these links could help you out:

1) Methodology for calculating SPI:

http://ccc.atmos.colostate.edu/pub/spi.pdf

2) MATLAB script for calculating SPI (based on methodology from first link)

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/26018-standardized-precipitation-index/content/SPI.m

If you have access to MATLAB, you can try the script given in the link above. If you are looking for a free GIS software, you might want to look into Quantum GIS: http://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/index.html

Keep us posted with more details, and maybe others who are more familiar with this topic can be of more assistance.

Good luck!