Developing Drought Indicators for Assessing Multi-Sectoral Impacts Using a Systems Approach

California’s water storage and conveyance infrastructure—called the “water grid”—serves as a hedge against droughts. However, water operations—and more broadly the role of humans in reshaping drought risk and socio-environmental impacts—are usually not considered in characterizing drought status. The overall goal this project is to develop a framework for linking drought hazard indicators with sector-specific impacts in highly managed water storage and conveyance systems, such as those of the American West. To achieve this goal we have developed sector-specific drought hazard indicators for California that take into account water availability considering the built infrastructure, and management operations from both local and more distant water sources. After obtaining drought hazard indicators, we show case studies developing drought impact risk profiles for four sectors—agriculture, cities, small communities, and the environment—that reflect the capacity of these different sectors to respond and adapt to drought conditions.

One of the most innovative parts of this project is the co-development of decision support tools. Working with five different stakeholder advisory groups—science, agriculture, cities, small communities and environment—we are identifying the usefulness of the indicators, and thresholds and triggers that can be tailored for local, state, and federal drought response.

To conclude we will discuss the benefits and challenges of the current methodology, including data availability, the challenges associated with non-stationarity, and the co-development process with stakeholders.