Water scarcity and droughts are different phenomena although they are liable to aggravate the impacts of each other. In some regions, the severity and frequency of droughts can lead to water scarcity situations, while overexploitation of available water resources can exacerbate the consequences of droughts. Therefore, attention needs to be paid to the synergies between these two phenomena, especially in river basins affected by water scarcity.

Droughts and water scarcity are increasingly being observed in many regions of Europe, requiring innovative hydrological monitoring, modeling and forecasting approaches to evaluate the complexity of hydrological impacts on both water resources availability and quality.

The success of drought and water scarcity preparedness and mitigation measures depends primarily upon timely information on drought development in time and space and water resources status. It is therefore necessary to improve the predictive skills for droughts and to develop innovative indicators and methodologies for enhancing the early warning capability of drought monitoring and forecasting systems.

The session will address modeling techniques, both of the data-driven and of the physically-based type, aimed at monitoring and forecasting, over medium to long time horizons, the hydro-meteorological variables that describe and govern a situation of water scarcity, and in particular: precipitation, streamflow, snow cover, soil moisture and groundwater.

Particularly welcome are applications and real-world case studies in regions subject to significant water stress, where the importance of long-term water resources availability forecasts is likely to be further exacerbated in the future.