Abstract
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.
Highlights
Much progress has been made since Wilhite and Glantz (1985) criticized the drought research community for a disproportionate research focus on climate and hydrology, while not sufficiently incorporating the economic, political, and other human aspects that affect this hazard
Because of the trans-boundary impacts of large-scale drought in Europe and the transnational data sharing challenges inherent in the European Union, the development of a comprehensive drought impact database is important for Europe. In support of this request, this study demonstrates the potential of a novel database of categorized drought impact reports for Europe that was developed within the EU FP-7 project DROUGHTR&SPI
Unlike efforts that rely mostly on popular press and news coverage to target real-time occurrence of drought impacts, the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII) database was established for historical drought analysis within a multi-national research project
Summary
Much progress has been made since Wilhite and Glantz (1985) criticized the drought research community for a disproportionate research focus on climate and hydrology, while not sufficiently incorporating the economic, political, and other human aspects that affect this hazard. Because of the trans-boundary impacts of large-scale drought in Europe and the transnational data sharing challenges inherent in the European Union, the development of a comprehensive drought impact database is important for Europe In support of this request, this study demonstrates the potential of a novel database of categorized drought impact reports for Europe that was developed within the EU FP-7 project DROUGHTR&SPI (http://www.eu-drought.org). Unlike efforts that rely mostly on popular press and news coverage to target real-time occurrence of drought impacts (e.g., the European Media Monitor used by the European Drought Observatory of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission http://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu), the EDII database was established for historical drought analysis within a multi-national research project It incorporates these sources as well, but in order to collect data from past decades, it relies more heavily on scientific and governmental sources, including published regular or special reports in European native languages, theses, scientific articles, and other such sources. Only a limited number of entries have associated information on secondary impacts or response measures in time and space at the scales of interest in the paper (long period of time, pan-Europe), preventing an analysis of these aspects given the current content of the database
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