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This paper pursues a methodological objective, developing and validating a structured approach for the recognition of areas under the highest levels of drought risk, suitable for data-scarce environments. The approach is based on recent scientific outcomes and methods and can be easily adapted to different contexts in subsequent exercises. The research reviews the history of hydro-meteorological drought in the south of Angola and characterizes the experienced hazard in the episode from 2012. Also, it intends to portray the socioeconomic vulnerabilities and the exposure to the phenomenon in the region to fully comprehend the risk. A list and map of these areas at high risk are two of the main outputs of this work. The results demonstrate that most of the region experienced a severe multi-year meteorological drought that was intensifying at the time of writing of this paper, and that the majority of its impacts started immediately after the rainfall anomalies appeared. Last, the study confirms that the set of indicators used reveals different facets of vulnerability, leading to different drought vulnerability profiles in the South of Angola and, consequently, to several varieties of priority areas prone to distinctive impacts.

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Sand dams are simple and effective structures built across ephemeral riverbeds in arid/semi-arid regions to harvest water within sand pores and increase water availability and quality for rural communities. The complex morphological, hydrological, social and economic conditions that make sand dams a beneficial tool for water resilience are largely influenced by the siting phase. Proper location of a sand dam can reduce community’s travel time to water points, reduce water conflicts and increase food security through expansion of irrigated agriculture. On the other hand, a misplacement of sand dams can, at worst, increase disparities in water access and increase local conflicts. To approach a viable siting of sand dams, most projects are developed and delivered with the community through a bottom-up approach. However, in case of large-scale project, remote sensing and biophysical analysis are the dominant approach, leaving the socio-economic component at the margins of the siting strategy and eventually affecting the benefits to local communities. In this paper, we propose a large-scale participatory methodology to sand dams siting, which draws on mixed-methods connecting the conventional top-down biophysical analysis with bottom-up participatory research. We first describe the generic approach developed for sand dams siting in Namibe, a semi-arid region of South-west of Angola, then we draw on our case to propose a generic approach to large-scale participatory siting beyond Namibe.

• It is simple and data undemanding, needing exclusively monthly precipitation time series. • One of its marks of identity is its rainfall anomaly accummulation, whose computation is restarted anytime negative anomalies reappear. • The DEPI values are the empirical probability of exceedance of the calculated rainfall cumulative anomalies. • The research revealed that the DEPI shows great ability to reflect the onset, end, actual duration and peak of the drought.