Deciphering Vulnerability Dynamics: A Review on Conceptual and Methodological Pluralism in Dynamic Drought Vulnerability Assessments

Drought risks are characterized by complex characteristics and processes, which underpin all risk components, i.e. hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The dynamics of drought vulnerability are of particular interest since they can provide important information for adaptive risk management and adaptation practices in the face of growing drought risks, where a static understanding of vulnerability may not be effective or even prove to be maladaptive. For this reason, the scientific and policy-making communities have been increasingly advocating for including vulnerability dynamics in drought risk assessments. However, no overview exists of how scientists approach drought vulnerability dynamics, and there is a lack of conceptual clarity as to which types of changes (e.g. temporal, spatial, or system’s drivers and components) should be the object of dynamic vulnerability assessments.

To fill this gap, we carried out a systematic review of drought vulnerability dynamics to shed light on concepts, approaches, and methodologies available in the scientific literature. The review covered English peer-reviewed publications retrieved from the Scopus database and refined through multiple steps of assessment, using fixed inclusion/exclusion criteria and a “four-eyes” principle. Our review shows that only a minority of the studies considered and assessed vulnerability in its dynamic components. Moreover, within these, most of the applications only considered temporal dynamics, i.e. changes through time, and only a minority investigated drought vulnerability dynamics within a multi-hazard context. This highlights that more research is required to fully account for the complexity of drought risks and to better support risk management. The review results were also instrumental in informing a novel conceptual framework on vulnerability dynamics, which can guide future research advancements and applications, beyond the confines of any single hazards.