Evaluating tropical drought risk by combining open access gridded vulnerability and hazard data products

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Hydrology
• Climate Change Adaptation

Background:

• Tropical countries, despite water abundance, exhibit low resilience to drought.
• Limited knowledge exists on tropical drought characteristics, necessitating reliable risk assessment methods.
• Data scarcity in rural tropical regions hinders effective drought management.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a drought risk assessment methodology for data-scarce tropical regions.
• To combine drought hazard and vulnerability data for comprehensive risk evaluation.
• To create drought risk maps for selected tropical basins.

Main Methods:

• Drought hazard analysis using daily river discharge, precipitation, and vegetation condition.
• Drought vulnerability assessment based on socioeconomic data.
• Integration of hazard and vulnerability data to generate grid-cell level drought risk maps.

Main Results:

• Identified downstream Muriaé basin (Brazil) as high drought risk.
• Located highest risk in Tempisque basin (Costa Rica) along streams and irrigation systems.
• Pinpointed risk hotspots in Upper Magdalena (Colombia) and Srepok (Cambodia/Vietnam) agricultural areas.

Conclusions:

• The developed methodology offers a holistic, science-based framework for drought risk assessment in data-scarce tropical regions.
• The approach is adaptable to various tropical catchments, aiding in data set and index selection.
• Outcomes provide crucial information for regional planners and water managers to mitigate future drought disasters.