“…At the global scale several studies have been published in recent years, focusing on the assessment of flood risk (Hirabayashi et al, 2013;Ward et al, 2013Ward et al, , 2014, seismic risk (Silva et al, 2018), cyclone risk (Peduzzi et al, 2012) or multi-hazard risk (e.g., Dilley et al, 2005;Peduzzi et al, 2009;Welle and Birkmann, 2015;Garschagen et al, 2016;INFORM, 2019;Koks et al, 2019;UNDRR, 2019). While major progress has been made regarding the mapping, prediction and monitoring of drought events at the global scale (e.g., Yuan and Wood, 2013;Geng et al, 2013;Spinoni et al, 2013Spinoni et al, , 2019bDamberg and AghaKouchak, 2014;Hao et al, 2014;Carrão et al, 2017), very few studies have assessed either exposure to drought hazards (Güneralp et al, 2015) or drought risk at the global level (Carrão et al, 2016;Dilley et al, 2005;Li et al, 2009). The study by Carrão et al (2016) presents the first attempt to map drought risk at the global scale while considering drought hazard (based on precipitation deficits), exposure (population, livestock, crops, water stress) and societal vulnerability (based on social, economic and infrastructural indicators).…”