An impact perspective on pan-European drought sensitivity

<p>In the past decades, Europe experienced several severe drought events with diverse environmental and socio-economic impacts. The EU FP-7 project DROUGHT R&amp;SPI has investigated past drought impacts across different European countries and geoclimatic regions based on different approaches: participatory techniques, the collection and analysis of reported drought impacts, and quantitative impact data. This article gives a summary of the work on impacts and shows detailed results of a comparison of stakeholder perception on drought impacts with data from the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII), the new database established within the project. The data largely confirm the perceived importance of impacts on agriculture, water supply, and energy production, with data on reported impacts suggesting a slightly higher relative importance of agriculture in the South and East, of public water supplies in the South and West; the importance of energy and industry impacts appears to be country-specific. The differences in relevance of the affected sectors and in type of impacts even within the same broader category support the need to determine impact-specific indicators for monitoring and management. The EDII database is now publicly available online for use and for contribution from the community, and the patterns found will have to be reassessed as it expands over time.