New Paper Published
Estimating drought impact risk across Europe
Estimating drought impact risk across Europe
Posted by Jim Stagge on July 14, 2016
I am a coauthor on a new paper, published this week by Natural Hazards and Earth Systems Sciences in its final form. The paper, entitled “Estimating drought risk across Europe from reported drought impacts, drought indices, and vulnerability factors”, shows the use of qualitative drought impact information, made possible by the creation of the European Drought Impact Inventory to estimate relative sensitivity to drought regionally and for many drought-related impacts.
Multiple combinations of drought hazard indices (SPI, SPEI) and vulnerability factors (societal, economic, and environmental factors) were tested as predictors of drought impact occurence across Europe. Once impact models were trained, drought risk maps were generated, showing the showing the drought sensitivity and relative risk for each NUTS regions and impact type. These impact types include agriculture, forestry, energy, public water supply, water quality, etc.
You can find the full paper (open access) here:
Blauhut, V., Stahl, K., Stagge, J.H., Tallaksen, L.M., De Stefano, L., Vogt, J. (2016) "Estimating drought risk across Europe from reported drought impacts, drought indices, and vulnerability factors" Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, Vol. 20, Pages 2779-2800, 10.5194/hess-20-2779-2016.
Abstract
Drought is one of the most costly natural hazards in Europe. Due to its complexity, drought risk, meant as the combination of the natural hazard and societal vulnerability, is difficult to define and challenging to detect and predict, as the impacts of drought are very diverse, covering the breadth of socioeconomic and environmental systems. Pan-European maps of drought risk could inform the elaboration of guidelines and policies to address its documented severity and impact across borders. This work tests the capability of commonly applied drought indices and vulnerability factors to predict annual drought impact occurrence for different sectors and macro regions in Europe and combines information on past drought impacts, drought indices, and vulnerability factors into estimates of drought risk at the pan-European scale. This hybrid approach bridges the gap between traditional vulnerability assessment and probabilistic impact prediction in a statistical modelling framework. Multivariable logistic regression was applied to predict the likelihood of impact occurrence on an annual basis for particular impact categories and European macro regions. The results indicate sector- and macro-region-specific sensitivities of drought indices, with the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) for a 12-month accumulation period as the overall best hazard predictor. Vulnerability factors have only limited ability to predict drought impacts as single predictors, with information about land use and water resources being the best vulnerability-based predictors. The application of the hybrid approach revealed strong regional and sector-specific differences in drought risk across Europe. The majority of the best predictor combinations rely on a combination of SPEI for shorter and longer accumulation periods, and a combination of information on land use and water resources. The added value of integrating regional vulnerability information with drought risk prediction could be proven. Thus, the study contributes to the overall understanding of drivers of drought impacts, appropriateness of drought indices selection for specific applications, and drought risk assessment.
Fig. 4. Reproduced from article. Drought risk maps with the likelihood of impact occurrence (LIO) in the impact categories Agriculture and Livestock Farming, Forestry, Aquaculture and Fisheries, Energy and Industry, and Waterborne transportation (columns) for three hazard levels of SPEI with −0.5: near normal, −1.5: severely dry, and −2.5: extremely dry (rows).