scholarly journals Impacts of European drought events: insights from an international database of text-based reports

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 801-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerstin Stahl ◽  
Irene Kohn ◽  
Veit Blauhut ◽  
Julia Urquijo ◽  
Lucia De Stefano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Public Water Supply ◽  
Research Database ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Promising Source ◽  
Over Time

Abstract. Drought is a natural hazard that can cause a wide range of impacts affecting the environment, society, and the economy. Providing an impact assessment and reducing vulnerability to these impacts for regions beyond the local scale, spanning political and sectoral boundaries, requires systematic and detailed data regarding impacts. This study presents an assessment of the diversity of drought impacts across Europe based on the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII), a unique research database that has collected close to 5000 impact reports from 33 European countries. The reported drought impacts were classified into major impact categories, each of which had a number of subtypes. The distribution of these categories and types was then analyzed over time, by country, across Europe and for particular drought events. The results show that impacts on agriculture and public water supply dominate the collection of drought impact reports for most countries and for all major drought events since the 1970s, while the number and relative fractions of reported impacts in other sectors can vary regionally and from event to event. The analysis also shows that reported impacts have increased over time as more media and website information has become available and environmental awareness has increased. Even though the distribution of impact categories is relatively consistent across Europe, the details of the reports show some differences. They confirm severe impacts in southern regions (particularly on agriculture and public water supply) and sector-specific impacts in central and northern regions (e.g., on forestry or energy production). The protocol developed thus enabled a new and more comprehensive view on drought impacts across Europe. Related studies have already developed statistical techniques to evaluate the link between drought indices and the categorized impacts using EDII data. The EDII is a living database and is a promising source for further research on drought impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks across Europe. A key result is the extensive variety of impacts found across Europe and its documentation. This insight can therefore inform drought policy planning at national to international levels.

scholarly journals Impacts of European drought events: insights from an international database of text-based reports

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 5453-5492 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Stahl ◽  
I. Kohn ◽  
V. Blauhut ◽  
J. Urquijo ◽  
L. De Stefano ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Public Water Supply ◽  
Research Database ◽  
Impact Categories ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Promising Source ◽  
Over Time

Abstract. Drought is a natural hazard that can cause a wide range of impacts affecting the environment, society, and the economy. Assessing and reducing vulnerability to these impacts for regions beyond the local scale, spanning political and sectoral boundaries, requires systematic and detailed data regarding impacts. This study presents an assessment of the diversity of drought impacts across Europe based on the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII), a unique research database that has collected close to 5000 impact reports from 33 European countries. The reported drought impacts were classified into major impact categories, each of which had a number of subtypes. The distribution of these categories and types was then analyzed over time, by country, across Europe and for particular drought events. The results show that impacts on agriculture and public water supply dominate the collection of drought impact reports for most countries and for all major drought events since the 1970s, while the number and relative fractions of reported impacts in other sectors can vary regionally and from event to event. The data also shows that reported impacts have increased over time as more media and website information has become available and environmental awareness has increased. Even though the distribution of impact categories is relatively consistent across Europe, the details of the reports show some differences. They confirm severe impacts in southern regions (particularly on agriculture and public water supply) and sector-specific impacts in central and northern regions (e.g. on forestry or energy production). As a text-based database, the EDII presents a new challenge for quantitative analysis; however, the EDII provides a new and more comprehensive view on drought impacts. Related studies have already developed statistical techniques to evaluate the link between drought indices and impacts using the EDII. The EDII is a living database and is a promising source for further research on drought impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks across Europe. A key result is the extensive variety of impacts found across Europe and its documentation. This data coverage may help drought policy planning at national to international levels.

Economic Issues in Water Privatisation and Regulation

1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 1921-1928
Author(s):  
D. R. Glynn ◽  
W. R. Baker ◽  
C. A. Jones ◽  
J. L. Liesner
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Sewage Treatment ◽  
Public Water Supply ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Us ◽  
Water And Sewerage Industry ◽  
Treatment And Disposal

During the privatisation of the United Kingdom water and sewerage industry a wide range of important and challenging practical economic issues were encountered, many of which also arise in some form or other throughout the developed and developing worlds. One such issue is the control of the prices charged for public water supply and sewerage, sewage treatment and disposal services. This paper explores some of those issues, analyses how privatisation and regulation have been shaped in order to address them, and, where possible, evaluates performance so far. Where appropriate, examples of how similar issues have been tackled are given for other countries, including the US and France.

scholarly journals Linking drought indices to impacts to support drought risk assessment in Liaoning province, China

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaxu Wang ◽  
Juan Lv ◽  
Jamie Hannaford ◽  
Yicheng Wang ◽  
Hongquan Sun ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Liaoning Province ◽  
Drought Monitoring ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Drought Vulnerability ◽  
Random Forest Analysis ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts

Abstract. Drought is a ubiquitous and reoccurring hazard that has wide ranging impacts on society, agriculture and the environment. Drought indices are vital for characterizing the nature and severity of drought hazards, and there have been extensive efforts to identify the most suitable drought indices for drought monitoring and risk assessments. However, to date, little effort has been made to explore which index(s) best represents drought impacts for various sectors in China. This is a critical knowledge gap, as impacts provide important ‘ground truth’ information. They can be used to demonstrate whether drought indices (used for monitoring or risk assessment) are relevant for identifying impacts, thus highlighting if an area is vulnerable to drought of a given severity. The aim of this study is to explore the link between drought indices and drought impacts, using Liaoning province (northeast China) as a case study due to its history of drought occurrence. To achieve this we use independent, but complementary, methods (correlation and random forest analysis). Using multiple drought indices – Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), Soil Moisture (SoilM) and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) – and drought impact data (on crop yield, livestock, rural people and the economy) correlation and random forest analysis were used to identify which indices link best to the recorded drought impacts for cities in Liaoning. The results show that the relationship varies between different categories of drought impacts and between cities. SPEI with a 6-month accumulation (SPEI6) had a strong correlation with all categories of drought impacts, while SPI12 had a weak correlation with drought impacts. Of the impact datasets, drought suffering area and drought impact area had a slightly strong relationship with all drought indices in Liaoning province, while population and number of livestock with difficulty in accessing drinking water had weak correlations with the indices. Based on the linkage, drought vulnerability was analyzed using various vulnerability factors. Crop cultivated area was positively correlated to the drought vulnerability for five out of the eight categories of drought impacts, while the total population had a strong negative relationship with drought vulnerability for half the drought impact categories. This study can support drought planning efforts in the region, and provides a methodology for application for other regions of China (and other countries) in the future, as well as providing context for the indices used in drought monitoring applications, so enabling improved preparedness for drought impacts.

scholarly journals Linking drought indices to impacts to support drought risk assessment in Liaoning province, China

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 889-906
Author(s):  
Yaxu Wang ◽  
Juan Lv ◽  
Jamie Hannaford ◽  
Yicheng Wang ◽  
Hongquan Sun ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Liaoning Province ◽  
Drought Monitoring ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Drought Risk ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts ◽  
Standardised Precipitation Index ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. Drought is a ubiquitous and recurring hazard that has wide-ranging impacts on society, agriculture and the environment. Drought indices are vital for characterising the nature and severity of drought hazards, and there have been extensive efforts to identify the most suitable drought indices for drought monitoring and risk assessment. However, to date, little effort has been made to explore which index (or indices) best represents drought impacts for various sectors in China. This is a critical knowledge gap, as impacts provide important ground truth information for indices used in monitoring activities. The aim of this study is to explore the link between drought indices and drought impacts, using Liaoning province (northeast China) as a case study due to its history of drought occurrence. To achieve this we use independent, but complementary, methods (correlation and random forest analysis) to identify which indices link best to drought impacts for prefectural-level cities in Liaoning province, using a comprehensive database of reported drought impacts in which impacts are classified into a range of categories. The results show that the standardised precipitation evapotranspiration index with a 6-month accumulation (SPEI6) had a strong correlation with all categories of drought impacts, while the standardised precipitation index with a 12-month accumulation (SPI12) had a weak correlation with drought impacts. Of the impact datasets, “drought-suffering area” and “drought impact area” had a strong relationship with all drought indices in Liaoning province, while “population and number of livestock with difficulty in accessing drinking water” had weak correlations with the indices. The results of this study can support drought planning efforts in the region and provide context for the indices used in drought-monitoring applications, so enabling improved preparedness for drought impacts. The study also demonstrates the potential benefits of routine collection of drought impact information on a local scale.

scholarly journals Exploring the link between drought indicators and impacts

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 1381-1397 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Bachmair ◽  
I. Kohn ◽  
K. Stahl
Keyword(s):  
Standardized Precipitation Index ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Indicator Values ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Drought Impacts ◽  
Drought Conditions ◽  
Drought Indicators ◽  
Impact Data

Abstract. Current drought monitoring and early warning systems use different indicators for monitoring drought conditions and apply different indicator thresholds and rules for assigning drought intensity classes or issue warnings or alerts. Nevertheless, there is little knowledge on the meaning of different hydro-meteorologic indicators for impact occurrence on the ground. To date, there have been very few attempts to systematically characterize the indicator–impact relationship owing to sparse and patchy data on drought impacts. The newly established European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII) offers the possibility to investigate this linkage. The aim of this study was to explore the link between hydro-meteorologic indicators and drought impacts for the case study area Germany and thus to test the potential of qualitative impact data for evaluating the performance of drought indicators. As drought indicators two climatological drought indices – the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) – as well as streamflow and groundwater level percentiles were selected. Linkage was assessed though data visualization, extraction of indicator values concurrent with impact onset, and correlation analysis between monthly time series of indicator and impact data at the federal state level, and between spatial patterns for selected drought events. The analysis clearly revealed a significant moderate to strong correlation for some states and drought events allowing for an intercomparison of the performance of different drought indicators. Important findings were strongest correlation for intermediate accumulation periods of SPI and SPEI, a slightly better performance of SPEI versus SPI, and a similar performance of streamflow percentiles to SPI in many cases. Apart from these commonalities, the analysis also exposed differences among federal states and drought events, suggesting that the linkage is time variant and region specific to some degree. Concerning "thresholds" for drought impact onset, i.e. indicator values concurrent with past impact onsets, we found that no single "best" threshold value can be identified but impacts occur within a range of indicator values. Nevertheless, the median of the threshold distributions showed differences between northern/northeastern versus southern/southwestern federal states, and among drought events. While the findings strongly depend on data and may change with a growing number of EDII entries in the future, this study clearly demonstrates the feasibility of evaluating hydro-meteorologic variables with text-based impact reports and highlights the value of impact reporting as a tool for monitoring drought conditions.

Assessing likelihood of sectoral drought impact occurrence in South Korea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungho Seo ◽  
Jaehyeong Lee ◽  
Yeonjoo Kim
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Random Forest ◽  
Binary Data ◽  
Drought Index ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Public Water Supply ◽  
Random Forest Algorithm ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Occurrence

<p>Drought is the most complex natural hazard that can cause a wide range of impacts affecting the environment, the society, and the economy. Drought is often quantified with one or a set of drought indices, yet these drought indices are limited in capturing such various impacts. This study aimed to understand quantitative relationship between drought impact and drought occurrence in South Korea. We there constructed drought impact inventory by collecting data not only from the existing datasets but also by using a web-crawling method. The collected drought impact data were classified into categories such as agriculture and livestock farming, public water supply, wildfire, and water quality. Also, to quantify the drought occurrence, the standardized precipitation and evapotranspiration index (SPEI) was used as a drought index. We derive the likelihood of drought impact occurrence as a function of the drought index with using the log-logistic regression as well as the random forest algorithmas well as the random forest algorithm. Note that the logistic regression is appropriate with binary data such as drought impact occurrence and Note that the logistic regression is appropriate with binary data such as drought impact occurrence and the random forest algorithm is powerful algorithm to develop a predictive model based on classification and regression trees. As a result, the sector-specific likelihood of drought impact occurrence over the regions are identified. We show the highest likelihood of drought impact occurrence in public water supply for Jeonnam area, wildfire for Gangwon area and water quality for Gyeongnam. This study suggests that such drought impact information can support the decision-making for drought risk reduction.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Acknowledgement</strong></p><p>This work was supported by a grant from the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning (2020R1A2C2007670).</p>

scholarly journals A review of drought indices: predominance of drivers over impacts and the importance of local context

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarra Kchouk ◽  
Lieke A. Melsen ◽  
David W. Walker ◽  
Pieter R. van Oel
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Drought Event ◽  
Human Welfare ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts

Abstract. Drought monitoring and Early Warning Systems (DEWS) are seen as helpful tools to tackle drought at an early stage and reduce the possibility of harm or loss. They usually include indices attributed to meteorological, agricultural and/or hydrological drought: physically based drought drivers. These indices are used to determine the onset, end and severity of a drought event. Drought impacts are less monitored or even not included in DEWS. Therefore, the likelihood of experiencing drought impacts is often simply linearly linked to drivers of drought. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity of the assumed direct linkage between drivers of drought and drought impact. We reviewed scientific literature on both drivers and impacts of drought. We conducted a bibliometric analysis based on 5000+ scientific studies in which selected drought indices (drivers) and drought impacts were mentioned in relation to a geographic area. Our review shows that there is a tendency in scientific literature to focus on drivers of drought, with the preferred use of meteorological and remotely sensed drought indices. Studies reporting drought impacts are more localised, with relatively many studies focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa and Australasia for impacts with regard to food security and water security, respectively. Our review further suggests that drought-impacts studies are dependent on both the physical and human processes occurring in the geographic area, i.e. the local context. With the aim of increasing the relevance and utility of the information provided by DEWS, we argue in favour of additional consideration of drought impact indices oriented towards sustainable development and human welfare.

scholarly journals Moving from drought hazard to impact forecasts

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel J. Sutanto ◽  
Melati van der Weert ◽  
Niko Wanders ◽  
Veit Blauhut ◽  
Henny A. J. Van Lanen
Keyword(s):  
River Flow ◽  
Meteorological Drought ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Warning Systems ◽  
Drought Management ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts ◽  
Drought Hazard ◽  
Drought Early Warning

Abstract Present-day drought early warning systems provide the end-users information on the ongoing and forecasted drought hazard (e.g. river flow deficit). However, information on the forecasted drought impacts, which is a prerequisite for drought management, is still missing. Here we present the first study assessing the feasibility of forecasting drought impacts, using machine-learning to relate forecasted hydro-meteorological drought indices to reported drought impacts. Results show that models, which were built with more than 50 months of reported drought impacts, are able to forecast drought impacts a few months ahead. This study highlights the importance of drought impact databases for developing drought impact functions. Our findings recommend that institutions that provide operational drought early warnings should not only forecast drought hazard, but also impacts after developing an impact database.

Quantifying the responses of ecosystem production and respiration to drought time scale, intensity, timing and lagged response: A FLUXNET synthesis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenzhe Jiao ◽  
Lixin Wang
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Respiration ◽  
Gross Primary Production ◽  
Multiple Time Scales ◽  
Drought Indices ◽  
Drought Severity ◽  
Multiple Time ◽  
Drought Impact ◽  
Drought Impacts ◽  
Drought Conditions ◽  
Ecosystem Production

<p>Drought is not only a multiscale (e.g., temporal, spatial) but also a multidimensional (e.g., onset, offset, duration, frequency, magnitude, intensity) phenomenon, and ecosystem production and respiration may respond to each drought dimension differently.  Although multiple reports exist in literature on the drought impact on ecosystem productivity, it remains unclear how each component of drought impacts ecosystem gross primary production (GPP), ecosystem respiration (R<sub>ECO</sub>), and net ecosystem exchange (NEE) and how the different drought dimensions interacted with each other on their impacts. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive drought impact assessment on forest GPP, NEE, and R<sub>ECO</sub> including all the drought dimensions using FLUXNET observations and multiple time-scales of Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Our results indicated that while most earlier drought studies focused on simultaneous and post-drought conditions, the cumulative drought impacts and drought timing are more significantly impacting forest carbon uptake than simultaneous drought severity. Temporal standardization based meteorological drought indices could be used to accurately reflect plant water stress if antecedent and cumulative drought conditions are considered.</p>

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