The triple complexity of drought risk analysis and its visualisation via mapping: a review across scales and sectors

Blauhut, Veit

doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103345

Cited by 38 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 107 publications

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“…Water resources scholars have produced a large body of literature on the impacts of human activities on local water availability and management (e.g., Alborzi et al., 2018; B. Ashraf et al., 2017; Castelletti et al., 2008; Garcia et al., 2019; Herman et al., 2015, 2016; Simonovic, 1992; Sivapalan et al., 2012; Srinivasan et al., 2018; You & Cai, 2008; Boelens et al., 2016; Di Baldassarre et al., 2015; Montanari et al., 2013; Wesselink et al., 2017). Also, droughts are increasingly being studied from an impact perspective (Blauhut, 2020; Hagenlocher et al., 2019) considering not only the risk but also societal exposure and vulnerability (e.g., Blauhut et al., 2016; Carrão et al., 2016; Meza et al., 2020). In this article, we attempt to bring together relevant ideas from different communities together with a focus on the human dimension of drought, highlighting the progress, research gaps, and opportunities ahead.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic Drought: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities

AghaKouchak

Mirchi

Madani

et al. 2021

Reviews of Geophysics

177

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Traditional, mainstream definitions of drought describe it as deficit in water-related variables or water-dependent activities (e.g., precipitation, soil moisture, surface and groundwater storage, and irrigation) due to natural variabilities that are out of the control of local decision-makers. Here, we argue that within coupled human-water systems, drought must be defined and understood as a process as opposed to a product to help better frame and describe the complex and interrelated dynamics of both natural and human-induced changes that define anthropogenic drought as a compound multidimensional and multiscale phenomenon, governed by the combination of natural water variability, climate change, human decisions and activities, and altered micro-climate conditions due to changes in land and water management. This definition considers the full spectrum of dynamic feedbacks and processes (e.g., land-atmosphere interactions and water and energy balance) within human-nature systems that drive the development of anthropogenic drought. This process magnifies the water supply demand gap and can lead to water bankruptcy, which will become more rampant around the globe in the coming decades due to continuously growing water demands under compounding effects of climate change and global environmental degradation. This challenge has de facto implications for both short-term and long-term water resources planning and management, water governance, and policymaking. Herein, after a brief overview of the anthropogenic drought concept and its examples, we discuss existing research gaps and opportunities for better understanding, modeling, and management of this phenomenon.Plain Language Summary This article reviews research and progress on the notion of anthropogenic drought broadly defined as drought events caused or intensified by human activities. Most commonly used drought definitions are based on deficit in hydrologic/meteorologic drivers such as precipitation and runoff. Within coupled human-water systems, however, drought must be defined and understood as the complex and interrelated dynamics of both natural and human-induced changes. This anthropogenic drought definition considers the full spectrum of dynamic feedbacks and processes (e.g., land-atmosphere interactions and water and energy balance) within human-nature systems. Ideally, anthropogenic drought and the corresponding human interactions should be incorporated in models that include land-atmosphere interactions, water balance, and energy balance. In this article, we review AGHAKOUCHAK ET AL.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic Drought: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities

AghaKouchak

Mirchi

Madani

et al. 2021

Reviews of Geophysics

177

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“…Globally, drought is one of the most damaging natural hazards (Blauhut, 2020). Droughts pose a major threat to lives and livelihoods across the world, and the impacts of drought are expected to increase in future on a global scale, due to anthropogenic warming (Prudhomme et al, 2014) and socioeconomic changes (Arnell et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional Differences in Spatiotemporal Drought Characteristics in Great Britain

Tanguy

Haslinger

Svensson

et al. 2021

Front. Environ. Sci.

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Despite being one of the most damaging natural hazards, droughts and their spatiotemporal dynamics are typically not well understood. Great Britain, which is the focus of this work, has experienced many major drought episodes in the past, causing a range of socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Here, we apply a recently developed technique to identify and characterise past droughts, using space-time connectivity to extract events from a monthly gridded precipitation dataset covering 1862–2015, without imposing fixed geographical boundaries or time-frames. For each grid cell, the data was aggregated into four new time series using moving averages over 3-, 6-, 12- and 24-month windows. These reflect a range of response times for different types of drought impacts. Drought events were then extracted for each time window separately. In order to assess regional differences in drought characteristics, each extracted drought was assigned to one of three regions: the South-East (SE), the North-West (NW) and a “Transition” region in-between them. A frequency analysis of drought characteristics (duration, area, intensity and severity) highlighted differences between regions: for short and medium accumulation periods (3, 6, and 12 months), short and less severe droughts are more frequent in the NW than in the SE, whereas long, spatially extended and more severe droughts are more frequent in the SE than in the NW. However, for long accumulation periods (24 months), fewer differences are observed between the NW and the SE. In the “Transition” region, severe droughts are less frequent than in the other two regions. A timeline of historic drought events detected by our method included the vast majority of known drought events from previous studies, with a few additional ones, and we shed important new light on the relative severity of these historical drought episodes. Finally, an analysis of the spatial coherence between regions showed that the most extreme drought events presented little spatial coherence, whereas less severe droughts tend to be more spatially coherent. This has important implications for water resources planning and drought management strategies, particularly given the increasing emphasis on inter-regional water transfers as a potential solution in situations of extreme drought.

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“…al. , 2018, whereas knowledge of the relationship between drought management, perception and impacts remains limited (Blauhut 2020, Hagenlocher et al 2019Kreibich et al 2019). Understanding how different stakeholders perceive a specific drought event and its potential impacts can contribute to defining and successfully implementing drought mitigation measures adapted to a site-specific context (Alduce et al 2017).…”

Section: Drought Risk and Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons from the 2018–2019 European droughts: A collective need for unifying drought risk management

Blauhut

Stoelzle

Ahopelto

et al. 2021

Preprint

Self Cite

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Abstract. Drought events and their impacts vary spatially and temporally due to diverse pedo-climatic and hydrologic conditions, as well as variations in exposure and vulnerability, such as demographics and response actions. While hazardous severity and frequency of past drought events have been studied in detail, little is known about the effect of drought management strategies on the actual impacts, and how the hazard is perceived by relevant stakeholders for inducing action. In a continental study, we characterised and assessed the impacts and the perceptions of two recent drought events (2018 and 2019) in Europe and examined the relationship between management strategies and drought perception, hazard and impacts. The study was based on a pan-European survey involving national representatives from 28 countries and relevant stakeholders responding to a standard questionnaire. The survey focused on collecting information on stakeholders’ perceptions of drought, impacts on water resources and beyond, water availability and current drought management strategies at national and regional scales. The survey results were compared with the actual drought hazard information registered by the European Drought Observatory (EDO) for 2018 and 2019. The results highlighted high diversity in drought perceptions across different countries and in values of implemented drought management strategies to alleviate impacts by increasing national and sub-national awareness and resilience. The study concludes with an urgent need to further reduce drought impacts by constructing and implementing a European macro-level drought governance approach, such as a directive, which would strengthen national drought management and lessen harm to human and natural potentials.

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The triple complexity of drought risk analysis and its visualisation via mapping: a review across scales and sectors

Cited by 38 publications

References 107 publications

Anthropogenic Drought: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities

Anthropogenic Drought: Definition, Challenges, and Opportunities

Regional Differences in Spatiotemporal Drought Characteristics in Great Britain

Lessons from the 2018–2019 European droughts: A collective need for unifying drought risk management

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