About Drought Handbook: Outputs & Impacts
As the UK’s £12m Drought and Water Scarcity (DWS) research programme reaches its conclusion with a final event at The Royal Society in London, this handbook draws together the key outputs and outcomes. The book also features a series of interviews with our leading stakeholders, which highlight how successfully we have met our objectives to produce cutting-edge science that has made a demonstrable impact on how decision-makers manage water scarcity in the UK.
As the UK’s £12m Drought and Water Scarcity (DWS) research programme reaches its conclusion with a final event at The Royal Society in London, this handbook draws together the key outputs and outcomes. The book also features a series of interviews with our leading stakeholders, which highlight how successfully we have met our objectives to produce cutting-edge science that has made a demonstrable impact on how decision-makers manage water scarcity in the UK.
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THE DWS<br />
PROJECTS<br />
MaRIUS<br />
<strong>Impacts</strong> of water scarcity on the<br />
environment, society and the<br />
economy are complex. They are<br />
profoundly shaped by human<br />
choices and trade-offs between<br />
competing claims to water. Current<br />
practices for management of<br />
droughts in the UK have largely<br />
evolved from experience. Each<br />
drought tests institutions and<br />
society in distinctive ways. Yet it is<br />
questionable whether this empirical<br />
and heuristic approach is fit for<br />
purpose in the future, because the<br />
past is an incomplete guide to future<br />
conditions.<br />
The MaRIUS project has<br />
explored a risk-based approach<br />
to the management of droughts<br />
and water scarcity, drawing upon<br />
global experiences and insights<br />
from other hazards to society<br />
and the environment. MaRIUS has<br />
assessed, in the context of real case<br />
studies and future scenarios, how<br />
risk metrics can be used to inform<br />
management decisions and societal<br />
preparedness. Enquiry has taken<br />
place at a range of different scales,<br />
from households and farms to river<br />
basins and national scales. Finescale<br />
granular analysis is essential<br />
for understanding drought impacts.<br />
Aggregation to broader scales<br />
provides evidence to inform critical<br />
decisions in water companies,<br />
national governments and agencies.<br />
Analysis on a range of timescales<br />
demonstrates the interactions<br />
between long-term planning and<br />
short-term decision making, and the<br />
difference this makes to impacts and<br />
risks.<br />
Underpinning the risk-based<br />
approach to management of water<br />
scarcity, the MaRIUS project has<br />
developed an integrated suite of<br />
models of drought processes and<br />
impacts of water scarcity. A new<br />
‘event set’ of past and possible future<br />
hydroclimatic drought conditions,<br />
enables extensive testing of drought<br />
scenarios. The representation of<br />
drought processes in hydrological<br />
models at catchment and national<br />
scales will be enhanced, enabling<br />
improved analysis of drought<br />
frequency, duration and severity.<br />
The representation of drought<br />
impacts in models of species<br />
abundance and biodiversity in rivers<br />
and wetland ecosystems, such as<br />
fens, lowland and upland bogs, was<br />
enhanced. A model of agricultural<br />
practices and output has been<br />
used to analyse drought impacts<br />
on agriculture and investigate<br />
the benefits of preparatory steps<br />
that may be taken by farmers. The<br />
potential economic losses due<br />
to water scarcity were analysed<br />
through a combination of ‘bottomup’<br />
study of households and<br />
businesses, and consideration<br />
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