Evaluating tropical drought risk by combining open access gridded vulnerability and hazard data products

Droughts are causing severe damages to tropical countries worldwide. Although water abundant, their resilience to water shortages during dry periods is often low. As there is little knowledge about tropical drought characteristics, reliable methodologies to evaluate drought risk in data scarce tropical regions are needed. We combined drought hazard and vulnerability related data to assess drought risk in four rural tropical study regions, the Muriaé basin, Southeast Brazil, the Tempisque-Bebedero basin in Costa Rica, the upper part of the Magdalena basin, Colombia and the Srepok, shared by Cambodia and Vietnam. Drought hazard was analyzed using the variables daily river discharge, precipitation and vegetation condition. Drought vulnerability was assessed based on regionally available socioeconomic data. Besides illustrating the relative severity of each indicator value, we developed drought risk maps combining hazard and vulnerability for each grid-cell. While for the Muriaé, our results identified the downstream area as being exposed to severe drought risk, the Tempisque showed highest risk along the major streams and related irrigation systems. Risk hotspots in the Upper Magdalena were found in the central valley and the dryer Southeast and in the Srepok in the agricultural areas of Vietnam and downstream Cambodia. Local scientists and stakeholders have validated our results and we believe that our drought risk assessment methodology for data scarce and rural tropical regions offers a holistic, science based and innovative framework to generate relevant drought related information. Being applied to other tropical catchments, the approaches described in this article will enable the selection of data sets, indices and their classification - depending on basin size, spatial resolution and seasonality. At its current stage, the outcomes of this study provide relevant information for regional planners and water managers dealing with the control of future drought disasters in tropical regions.