Although not usually the only cause of a civilization's decline, drought has been implicated as a major factor in such decline worldwide. Civilizations as diverse as the Akkadian Empire in Syria, the Maya in Guatemala, and the Tang Dynasty in China all experienced severe droughts immediately prior to the formal date of their collapse. My question is how could these or other cultures, civilizations, or nations endure severe drought and come out stronger? What plausible technologies or land-use strategies could have saved these entities? What are some examples of societies that did incorporate drought mitigation techniques and avoid collapse?
Coming out stronger sounds like a tall order and all the societies that you mentioned did take steps to you know mitigate the effects of draught, like shifting to less water intensive crops like millets and there are few societies in human history, prior to the Industrial age that have faced down a severe drought.
The Iranians in Iranian Plateau invented the qanat as the south west monsoon stopped reaching the center parts of the plateau and the Post Glacial lakes began to dry up, so they tapped the under water resources on a pretty large scale even for a early industrial society, but qanats are possible only in Iranian plateau since its filled with mountains which allows them to tap the aquafers at the base of the mountain or hill and extract the underground water. But qanats are pretty expensive to build and maintain and depended upon the largess of the government or local merchants who often sponsored these construction, but once constructed these under ground canals would be maintained by local societies themselves but the Iranians in the Iranian plateau developed land laws centered around the qanats, even settlement patterns were affected by it. But as drought mitigation strategy, this is sorta a over kill, the Iranians developed Qanat in response to slow aridification of their lands.
Employment of qanats in more flat surfaces can be and has been done in India, but most of these qanats fell into disuse as its maintenance cost was too high