Regulatory agencies have long adopted a three‐tier framework for risk assessment. We build on this structure to propose a tiered approach for resilience assessment that can be integrated into the ...existing regulatory processes. Comprehensive approaches to assessing resilience at appropriate and operational scales, reconciling analytical complexity as needed with stakeholder needs and resources available, and ultimately creating actionable recommendations to enhance resilience are still lacking. Our proposed framework consists of tiers by which analysts can select resilience assessment and decision support tools to inform associated management actions relative to the scope and urgency of the risk and the capacity of resource managers to improve system resilience. The resilience management framework proposed is not intended to supplant either risk management or the many existing efforts of resilience quantification method development, but instead provide a guide to selecting tools that are appropriate for the given analytic need. The goal of this tiered approach is to intentionally parallel the tiered approach used in regulatory contexts so that resilience assessment might be more easily and quickly integrated into existing structures and with existing policies.
Drought is among the most damaging, and least understood, of all “natural” hazards. Although some droughts last a single season and affect only small areas, the instrumental and paleoclimate records ...show that droughts have sometimes continued for decades and have impacted millions of square kilometers in North America, West Africa, and East Asia. To cross the spectrum of potential drivers and impacts, drought information systems have multiple sub-systems which include an integrated risk assessment, communication and decision support system of which early warning is a central component and output. An early warning system is much more than a forecast – it is a linked risk information (including people׳s perception of risk) and communication system that actively engages communities involved in preparedness. There are numerous drought systems warning systems being implemented at different scales of governance. We draw on the lessons of over 21 drought early warning systems around the world, in both developing and developed countries and at regional, national and community levels. The successes illustrate that effective early warning depends upon a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary collaboration among all concerned actors at each stage in the warning process from monitoring to response and evaluation. However, the links between the community-based approach and the national and global EWSs are relatively weak. Using the rich experience of information systems across the globe, this paper identifies pathways for knowledge management and action at the relevant scales for decision-making in response to a changing climate.
Present climate of northwestern South America and the southern Isthmus is detailed in terms of major hydro-climatic controls, supported by evidence from station records, reanalysis data and satellite ...information. In this tropical region, precipitation is the principal hydro-climatological variable to display great variability. The primary objective is to view the controls that operate at intra-seasonal to inter-decadal time scales. This is a topographical complex region whose climate influences range in provenance from the South Atlantic to the Canadian Prairies, and from the North Atlantic to the Eastern Pacific. The situation is further complicated by interactions and feedbacks, in time and space, between these influences, which are interconnected over various scales. The greatest single control on the annual cycle is the meridional migration of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone and its pattern of associated trade winds. Consideration of these alone and their interaction with the Cordilleras of the Andes and Central America produce a variety of unimodal and bimodal regimes. Regionally, two low level jet streams, the westerly Choco jet (5°N) and the easterly San Andrés jet (12–14°N), and their seasonal variability, have tremendous significance, as do mesoscale convective storms and mid-latitude cold fronts from both the northern (
“nortes”) and southern (
“friagems”) hemispheres. There are many examples of hydro-climatological feedbacks within the region. Of these the most notable is the interaction between evaporation over the Amazon, precipitation onto the eastern Andes and streamflow from the headwaters of the Amazon. This is further compounded by the high percentages of recycled precipitation over large areas of the tropics and the potential impacts of anthropogenic modification of the land surface. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon (ENSO) is the greatest single cause of interannual variability within the region, yet its effects are not universal in their timing, sign or magnitude. A set of regional physical connections to ENSO are established and their varying local manifestations are viewed in the context of the dominant precipitation generating mechanisms and feedbacks at that location. In addition, some potential impacts of longer run variations within the ocean-atmosphere system of the Atlantic are examined independently and in conjunction with ENSO. This review of the climatic controls and feedbacks in the region provides a spatial and temporal framework within which the highly complex set of factors and their interactions may be interpreted from the past.
PurposeThis paper applies the theory of cascading, interconnected and compound risk to the practice of preparing for, managing, and responding to threats and hazards. Our goal is to propose a ...consistent approach for managing major risk in urban systems by bringing together emergency management, organisational resilience, and climate change adaptation.Design/methodology/approachWe develop a theory-building process using an example from the work of the Greater London Authority in the United Kingdom. First, we explore how emergency management approaches systemic risk, including examples from of exercises, contingency plans and responses to complex incidents. Secondly, we analyse how systemic risk is integrated into strategies and practices of climate change adaptation. Thirdly, we consider organisational resilience as a cross cutting element between the approaches.FindingsLondon has long been a champion of resilience strategies for dealing with systemic risk. However, this paper highlights a potential for integrating better the understanding of common points of failure in society and organisations, especially where they relate to interconnected domains and where they are driven by climate change.Originality/valueThe paper suggests shifting toward the concept of operational continuity to address systemic risk and gaps between Emergency Management, Organizational Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation.
Integrated water resources management provides an often-recommended governance framework to manage water resources in a sustainable way. The application of this framework on Transboundary Rivers ...brings additional challenges, which can be exacerbated due to climate changes and extremes (such as droughts). These changes affect the operation of water infrastructures and will affect water management practices. Thus, the understanding and development of adaptation measures (across socio-economic, environmental and administrative systems) are critical, mainly on drought prone transboundary river basins. The paper draws on research conducted to 1) assess climatic risks in those watersheds, 2) describe the challenges in water resources management in the context of climate change, and 3) draw lessons for improving the use of research-based information. Two case studies were selected, the Colorado River Basin (North America) and the Guadiana River (Iberian Peninsula), the latter of which in the context of the five river basins shared between Portugal and Spain. Research and experience in these Basins show that several paradoxes in multistate water management and governance across borders militate against the accurate assessment of socio-economic impacts and the effective use of scientific information for meeting short-term needs in reducing longer-term vulnerabilities. Lessons drawn from both studies, but not always learned in practice, abound. These lessons include an expanded use of incentives for improving collaboration, water-use efficiency, demand management and for the development of climate services to inform water-related management as new threats arise. Recommendations are established for more effectively linking risk assessment approaches with resilience strategies that are applicable in practice and available to decision makers in a changing climate.
Daily station data from U.S. Department of Agriculture snowpack telemetry (SNOTEL) archives through the 1995/1996 season are used to examine the climatic characteristics of snow water equivalent ...(SWE) for the mountainous western United States and linkages with precipitation (PRE) and temperature. Quality control procedures were developed to screen outliers in each variable. SWE for April 1 at the SNOTEL sites compares favorably with colocated snow course values. Regional differences in the seasonal cycle of SWE are discussed in terms of winter‐half precipitation, temperature, and the corresponding SWE/PRE ratio. The percentage of annual precipitation represented by snowfall is highest for the Sierra Nevada (67%), northwestern Wyoming (64%), Colorado (63%), and Idaho/western Montana (62%) sectors, manifesting high SWE/PRE ratios and winter‐half precipitation maxima. Lower percentages for the Pacific Northwest (50%) and Arizona/New Mexico (39%) reflect lower ratios and, especially for the latter region, a larger fraction of PRE falling outside of the accumulation season. Interannual variability in SWE in the colder inland regions is primarily controlled by available precipitation. For the warmer Pacific coast regions and Arizona/New Mexico the more important factor is the SWE/PRE ratio, illustrating the sensitivity of these areas to climate change.
Post‐catastrophe recovery and financial liquidity have long challenged small Caribbean islands. These states are vulnerable to multifarious natural hazards that often cause considerable socioeconomic ...dislocation. Such events inflict heavy losses on businesses and households, and significantly disrupt all aspects of government operations. After Hurricane Ivan devastated the economies of some islands in September 2004—with estimated losses of as much as 200 per cent of gross domestic product in some cases—regional governments, aided by the World Bank and international donors, approved the creation of a regional catastrophe insurance scheme. This parametric‐based mechanism is underpinned by derivatives‐based catastrophe modelling whose outputs determine policy triggers and pay outs. Hazard models, particularly catastrophe models, are not widely accepted as yet. Despite recent advancements, major concerns have rendered them peripheral tools for many establishments. This paper reviews the region's vulnerabilities and examines constraints on the application of these models and suggests a means of improving their efficacy and acceptability.
The drought of the 1950s was among the most widespread, severe and sustained ever experienced in the United States. For several states, the severity of the 1950s drought exceeded that of the 1930s ...“Dust Bowl”. The 1950s were characterized by low rainfall amounts and by excessively high temperatures. The climatological aspects of the drought subsided in most areas with the spring rains of 1957. A careful review of official reports over this period reveals limited acknowledgment of the drought of the 1950s. The drought was no secret, but it did not receive a great deal of news coverage; later droughts of lower severity and shorter duration, such as 1976–77, 1988, 2002–2004, 2011–2012 and the ongoing drought in California (2011–2015), garnered much greater national focus. In this paper, the question why such a major geophysical variation appears to have elicited little major national policy response, including the apparent lack of significant media concern is addressed. In framing the discussion this study assesses, the evolution of drought during the 1950s to establish its national and regional policy contexts, technological improvements and financial changes prior to and during the event, and on and off-farm responses in terms of the socioeconomic impacts. The study provides an overview of key developments and concerns in agriculture since the early 20th Century sets the context for the 1950s, then moves to the farm itself as a unit of analysis. This approach shows not only how the situation may have appeared to those outside the afflicted areas, but also how decisions were guided by agricultural economics affecting farmers at the time, and the strong influence of broader historical trends in which the 1950s were embedded. The paper provides the relevant agricultural statistics and uncovers the political and public perceptions moving through the drought years. Overproduction was the fundamental, almost paradoxical problem facing American agriculture at the time. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the implications of this event, and the attendant responses, might provide guidance to future assessments of extremes such as severe drought in the context of a changing climate.
The Colorado River system exhibits the characteristics of a heavily over-allocated or ‘closing water system’. In such systems, development of mechanisms to allow resource users to acknowledge ...interdependence and to engage in negotiations and agreements becomes necessary. Recently, after a decade of deliberations and environmental assessments, the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP) was established to monitor and analyze the effects of dam operations on the Grand Canyon ecosystem and recommend adjustments intended to preserve and enhance downstream physical, cultural and environmental values. The Glen Canyon Dam effectively separates the Colorado into its lower and upper basins. Dam operations and adaptive management decisions are strongly influenced by variations in regional climate. This paper focuses on the management of extreme climatic events within the Glen and Grand Canyon Region of the Colorado River. It illustrates how past events (both societal and physical) condition management flexibility and receptivity to new information. The types of climatic information and their appropriate entry points in the annual cycle of information gathering and decision-making (the ‘hydro-climatic decision calendar’) for dam operations and the adaptive management program are identified. The study then describes how the recently implemented program, lessons from past events, and new climate information on the Colorado River Basin, facilitated responses during the major El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event of 1997–1998. Recommendations are made for engaging researchers and practitioners in the effective use of climatic information in similar settings where the decision stakes are complex and the system uncertainty is large.
THE HIGH-LEVEL MEETING ON NATIONAL DROUGHT POLICY Sivakumar, M. V. K.; Wilhite, Donald A.; Pulwarty, Roger S. ...
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,
04/2014, Volume:
95, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
...the economic, social, and environmental impacts of droughts have increased significantly worldwide. ...the 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 United Nations (UN) agencies and in- ternational and regional organizations, convened the High-Level Meeting on National Drought Policy (HMNDP).
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