Goal: To improve the monitoring of ground water levels and response to drought, to improve the resilience of communities in Maharashtra, India. Summary/Activities: Maharashtra is a state with a semi-arid climate, located in western India. Around two-thirds of its area is drought-prone, with droughts being declared in 2011–2012, and most recently in 2014–15. In Maharashtra, groundwater is the main source of drinking water in nearly 85 per cent of rural areas, with populations depending heavily on boreholes or wells to meet their domestic water needs. The state’s Groundwater Survey and Development Agency (GSDA) monitors groundwater levels in 1,531 watersheds on a quarterly basis. These evaluations have shown that very few watersheds experience over-exploitation, but drought has caused hundreds of thousands of wells have run dry in the past 10 to 15 years. UNICEF has worked with the Government of Maharashtra to improve the processes for predicting droughts and water availability, developing a model that can predict the probability of meteorological droughts occurring in a particular year based on the start date of a monsoon. The model can also estimate the amount of groundwater that will be available and predict crop and irrigation demands, based on rainfall data and well fluctuation during monsoon months. To feed the model, GSDA developed a real-time monitoring network for observation of wells and rain gauges. A water quality monitor appointed by the government collects data from this network in each village using mobile technology. To make the data readily available to decision makers and the public, a web-page dashboard was developed. The tool helps communities better manage their groundwater resources and better allocate water for drinking, irrigation and other purposes. Based on the success of this intervention, the government of Maharashtra is working to scale up the project throughout the state. More info: https://www.unicef.org/wash/waterandclimate/ https://www.unicef.org/wash/files/Climate_change_WASH_Brief.pdf https://www.unicef.org/about/annualreport/files/India_2015_COAR.pdf