Navigating Dry Futures with Seasonal Drought Forecasting: OUTLAST and SPS-Blue Nile Tools for Proactive Water Management
OUTLAST and SPS-Blue Nile projects shared their latest achievements and outcomes in a joint dissemination event on the 27th of November, 2025 at the Gustav-Stresemann Institute in Bonn.
Under the topic ‘Navigating Dry Futures with Seasonal Drought Forecasting: OUTLAST and SPS-Blue Nile Tools for Proactive Water Management’ a diverse group of scientists, users, service providers, regional agencies, international organizations (including WMO), donors, and other stakeholders explored the latest achievements attained by the OUTLAST and SPS-Blue Nile projects and discussed possibilities of long-term operational continuity.
The event started with a welcome by Dr. Rainer Müssner (Bundesministerium für Forschung, Technologie und Raumfahrt, BMFTR), who highlighted that the two projects, both funded by BMFTR under the GRoW initiative, have the high potential to improve the livelihood in drought-affected regions. In the following keynote presentations by Prof. Stefan Uhlenbrook (World Meteorological Organization, WMO) and Dr. Thomas Maurer (Federal Institute of Hydrology, BfG), the necessity for having operational services that transfer drought information to users and support water management as well as the exisiting challenges of operating such a computational system were emphasized.
Prof. Dr. Stefan Siebert and Prof. Dr. Harald Kunstmann provided an overview on existing drought early warning systems, highlighting the need for a multi-sectoral system and improved seasonal forecasts. After the introductory part, the OUTLAST team presented the OUTLAST workflow, gave examples of the skill of some OUTLAST products, and introduced the operational system. Two key stakeholders, Dr. Habiba Mtongori (Tanzania Meteorological Authority) and Dr. Kamar Saliyeva (KAZHYDROMET, Kazakhstan), highlighted the benefits of OUTLAST products as complementary information for national services in their regions.
After the presentation of achievements in the SPS-Blue-Nile project, participants joined lively plenary discussions on possible applications and the long-term operation of both projects.
The dissemination event was followed by a technical introduction to the OUTLAST web portals on 28th November 2025. During the two hours hands-on, participants and the OUTLAST team had a closer look at the functionalities and differences of the HydroSOS (https://wmohydrosos.ceh.ac.uk/portal) and the ICWRGC (https://geoportal.bafg.de/karten/outlast/) web portals, discussing advantages and possible improvements.
We would like to thank all the participants for their engagement and contribution to a lively event and productive discussions!
