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Learning from experience: a systematic review of assessments of vulnerability to drought

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Abstract

In the last decades, there have been an increasing number of vulnerability studies undertaken in the frameworks of several schools of thought and disciplines. This spur of activity is linked to the growing awareness about the importance of shifting from a crisis-reactive approach to a proactive and preventive risk management approach to deal with natural disasters. The severity of the impacts that drought provokes worldwide has also contributed to raise awareness about the need to improve its management. In this context, drought vulnerability assessments are the first step in the identification of underlying causes that generate drought impacts. This paper presents a systematic review of past assessments of vulnerability to drought, to enhance the understanding of vulnerability and help orientating future research in this field. Results suggest that there are important geographical and thematic gaps to be filled in the assessment of drought vulnerability. Transparency in the design and validation of results should be improved, while the availability of relevant, reliable, and updated data is still a major constraint at all levels.

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Notes

  1. World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO), in collaboration with a number of partners.

  2. Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) is a specialized library of systematic reviews.

  3. http://www.emdat.be/database.

  4. Some risk assessment studies (e.g., Blauhut et al. 2015) combine data about past drought impacts with hazard measurement in order to assess drought risk. This is a quite new approach that, contrary to traditional risk assessments, does not include a vulnerability assessment sensu stricto.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Mario Ballesteros for his help with the graphic material for this paper. This study was undertaken in the framework of the EU-funded project ‘‘Fostering European Drought Research and Science-Policy Interfacing’’ (DROUGHT R&SPI, Contract No. 282769).

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  1. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Itziar González Tánago, Julia Urquijo, Fermín Villarroya & Lucia De Stefano

  2. University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Veit Blauhut

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  1. Itziar González Tánago
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González Tánago, I., Urquijo, J., Blauhut, V. et al. Learning from experience: a systematic review of assessments of vulnerability to drought. Nat Hazards 80, 951–973 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-015-2006-1

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