Drought is a complex natural disaster with significant implications for agriculture, water resources, and socioeconomic development. Accurate and timely assessment of meteorological drought is crucial for effective management and mitigation strategies. Climate change has led to a rise in climatic anomalies, such as droughts, floods, heatwaves, and cold snaps, which have severe impacts on human well-being and societal patterns. Droughts, which are prolonged periods of limited or absent rainfall, pose significant challenges for sectors like agriculture, energy, and enterprises, especially in economically reliant countries with inadequate water management infrastructure. Drought indicators are essential in meteorology, agriculture, and hydrology for monitoring drought conditions. Accurate drought assessment relies on quantitative index-based comprehensive drought indices, such as India’s Aridity Anomaly Index (AAI), Deciles Index, Percent of Normal Index, Reconnaissance Drought Index (RDI), and the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). Drought management involves analyzing risk components and using analytical tools for decision making. A decision support system includes institutional, methodological, public, and operational components. Long-term actions include demand reduction through economic incentives, while short-term actions include increasing water supply through wastewater reutilization, inter-basin water conveyance, reservoir construction, and agricultural ponds. Impact minimization is achieved through educational initiatives, reallocating water resources, early warning systems, and insurance programs. Challenges include developing technologies to integrate data sources and create unified indicators, and geospatial decision-support systems facilitate hazard mapping and strategic drought management plans.

In Pakistan, energy production from nuclear, hydro, and gas sources is about 99%, and only 1% is produced from renewable energy resources. Biomass is an emerging renewable resource for Pakistan obtained by converting loose biomass into pellets of high density. In this regard, biomass is receiving more and more attention day by day due to its abundant availability. Due to improper management of biomass in terms of transportation, handling, storing, and lack of awareness, its use for energy production is very low. The environmental and health effects of dumping and incineration techniques are becoming more dangerous for developing countries and rural communities day by day. The densification technique is a currently emerging technology for developing countries. Pellet development using yard waste is a new concept that can meet energy demands in addition to reducing environmental pollution and sources of waste management. For this purpose, the biomass of yard waste was shredded and then dried under sunlight or open drying to reduce the moisture content in the biomass material to less than 16% before being carbonized. Five samples with different moisture content levels were made and pellets were prepared from them. The results achieved by the characterization of pellets show that yard waste pellets at 5% moisture content had the highest calorific value of about 17.76 MJ/kg. Flue gas analysis was carried out and emissions from all were determined at all five moisture contents.