Enhancing drought monitoring and early warning by linking indicators to impacts

Monitoring and Early-Warning (M&EW) systems are crucial for reducing
societal vulnerability to drought. While there are a range of extant M&EW systems globally,
such systems are typically based on physical (hydro-climatic) indicators, and they have
rarely been linked to societal or environmental impacts. This is the starting point for the
international, transdisciplinary project DrIVER (Drought Impacts and Vulnerability thresholds
in monitoring and Early warning research). This paper introduces the DrIVER project
and presents early research highlights including a review of current M&EW capacities and
knowledge gaps on the three continents, preliminary results of indicator-to-impact analyses
and an overview of the novel social learning framework being developed by the project.