Getting Started (Section 1)
This section takes a community through the initial steps of becoming Drought-Ready. Communities will form a leadership team, identify specific community benefits of drought planning, start a drought contact list, and gather community drought perceptions.
Information Gathering (Section 2)
This section will guide the community in assembling the best available information for decision-making. The community will learn how to record information about its water sources and users, gather information about past droughts and impacts, and identify factors that could serve to reduce or intensify the local effects of drought.
Establish Monitoring (Section 3)
This section takes a community through the process of developing a monitoring system to assess its current drought status. In this step a community will identify pertinent drought indicators to monitor real-time conditions, designate one or more people to regularly monitor drought conditions, identify the types of impacts to be monitored, and develop a “Drought Monitoring Report” to be disseminated on a regular basis to interested people or groups.
Public Awareness and Education (Section 4)
This section details the development of a public awareness and education campaign to encourage public support of the Drought-Ready Community process. Specifically, it guides communities through the process of developing a strategy, gathering educational materials, and assigning an implementation schedule.
Planning Responses (Section 5)
This section synthesizes the information developed in all the other sections. In Section 5, the community will create a list of strategies and actions that should be undertaken before and during a drought to reduce negative impacts, and will identify specific thresholds to help decide when to implement the pre-defined actions during a drought.