Drought is one of the most critical natural disasters that have devastating effects on natural habitats, ecosystems and many economic and social sectors. Due to these severe impacts of drought events, many studies are focused on monitoring, forecasting and analyzing drought risk, to help with drought preparedness plans and mitigation measures. This study presents a drought early warning system in the semiarid region of Brazil, called the Drought Risk Assessment Interface (DRAI), which is based on a composite index of meteorological drought risk. The risk index has two components: hazard and vulnerability. The hazard considers meteorological indicators while the vulnerability considers social variables. Based on the opinion of experts from several countries in the world, with more than ten years of experience in the field, we define the weight of each of these indicators using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). Then, the main early warning systems at national and international level were raised and then, a standard for generating warnings in the DRAI was proposed. The warnings were associated with seven drought risk mitigation measures validated by local technicians. DRAI has as its end user, in addition to other researchers, Civil Defenses that can act directly in risk mitigation actions. Finally, the system and its main features are presented. As future research, we suggest automating the collection of data that make up the hazard index as well as applying the study to the entire Brazilian territory.