Drought Impacts: Vulnerability thresholds in monitoring and Early-warning Research

干旱事件对几乎每一个气候带和每一个用水部门的水安全都构成威胁。虽然在短期内几乎无法预防干旱，但可以采取行动减少社会对干旱的脆弱性，包括发展干旱监测和预警系统。很少有人尝试评估广泛使用的物理指标在以反映相互关联的人类和环境原因、影响和影响的复杂性的方式捕捉干旱严重程度方面的相关性，而这种影响也没有充分纳入现有的干旱监测和评价系统。本项目力求通过改进自然（水文气象）干旱特征与环境和社会经济影响之间的概念和方法联系来填补这一空白，以便为加强干旱监测和监测系统和其他风险管理战略的发展提供信息。主要目标是：(1)比较和评估报告的干旱影响和物理干旱指标跨越不同的地理环境和治理体系，主要是在存在干旱M&EW系统的美国、欧洲和澳大利亚；(2)确定和比较干旱指标的阈值，这些指标定义了社会、生态系统服务和经济对一系列干旱影响的脆弱性（基于经验数据）；(3)通过一系列战略博弈研讨会，纳入社会学习，以探索一系列利益相关者与干旱有关的框架、决策和实践，并探索冲突和权衡，特别是环境方面的冲突和权衡。(4)在改进有针对性的干旱M&EW系统、干旱管理和培训的基础上，发展通往抗旱人类社区和生态系统的途径。一种创新的方法方法将结合水文气象和社会经济数据的使用。包括影响报告，以及旨在纳入利益相关者对干旱的看法和经验的社会学习方法。该小组将使用通常纳入监测系统的现有干旱指数数据集，以及广泛但未得到充分利用的干旱影响数据库（美国干旱报告、欧盟项目drought R&SPI数据库）。在一系列与供水商和其他利益相关者的研讨会上，将在战略游戏中探讨M&EW系统的适用性，并将结果反馈到分析和设计中。这种方法将支持为公共供水案例研究部门的有针对性的M&EW不断发展新方法。一些合作伙伴直接参与旱情监测和对不同先决条件下的潜力和机会进行有力评估，将保证项目的影响，从而有助于实现开发新做法的目标，使社区能够建立抗旱能力。

Drought events pose a threat to water security in virtually every climate zone and to every water use sector. Although little can be done in the short term to prevent a drought, actions can be taken to reduce the vulnerability of society to the event, including the development of drought monitoring and early warning (M&EW) systems. There have been few attempts to assess how relevant widely-used physical indicators are for capturing drought severity in a way that reflects the complexity of inter-related human and environmental causes, effects and impacts, and such impacts have not been adequately incorporated into existing drought M&EW systems. This project seeks to fill this gap by improving the conceptual and methodological link between natural (hydrometeorological) drought characterisation and environmental and socio-economic impacts, in order to inform the development of enhanced drought M&EW systems and other risk management strategies. The main objectives are:(1) to compare and evaluate reported drought impacts and physical drought indicators across different geographical settings and governance systems, primarily in the USA, Europe and Australia where drought M&EW systems exist (2) to identify and compare thresholds of drought indicators that define the vulnerability of society, ecosystem services and economy to a range of drought impacts (based on empirical data) (3) to engage, through a series of strategy-game workshops, into social learning in order to explore the framings, decision-making and practices relating to drought across a range of stakeholders, and explore conflicts and trade-offs, esp. including those for the environment(4) to develop pathways to drought resilient human communities and ecosystems based on improvement of targeted drought M&EW systems, drought management and trainingAn innovative methodological approach will combine the use of hydro-meteorological and socio-economic data, including impact reports, alongside social learning approaches designed to incorporate stakeholders views and experiences of drought. The team will use existing datasets of drought indices typically incorporated in monitoring systems, but also extensive, yet under-utilized, databases on drought impacts (US Drought Reporter, EU project DROUGHT R&SPI database). In a series of workshops with water suppliers and other stakeholders, the applicability of M&EW systems will be explored in strategy games and the results will feed back into analysis and design. This approach will support the iterative development of novel approaches for targeted M&EW for the case study sector of public water supply. The direct involvement of some partners in operational drought monitoring and robust assessment of the potentials and opportunities under different prerequisites will guarantee the project s impact and thus help move towards the goal of developing new practices enabling communities to build capacity for resilience to drought.