Socioeconomic Drought Under Growing Population and Changing Climate: A New Index Considering the Resilience of a Regional Water Resources System

Abstract

Socioeconomic drought occurs when water supply from a regional water resources system cannot meet the water demands. Even if a socioeconomic drought ends, the antecedent water deficit may continue to have impacts for some time, thus influencing the resilience of a regional water resources system. To take this into account, especially under growing population and changing climate, this study develops a new method through integrating a new index, Water Resources System Resilience Index (WRSRI), into socioeconomic drought event identification. The new index represents the percentage of the antecedent water deficit for a socioeconomic drought that can be recovered from the excess water during subsequent periods through analyzing records of a historical drought event. The methodology, implemented on the East River Basin in South China, involves three major steps: (1) calculation of WRSRI value; (2) analysis of key features of identified future socioeconomic drought events, that is, total number, longest duration (LD), and percentage on different drought levels; and (3) sensitivity analysis of WRSRI based on a total of 52 streamflow data sets generated from General Circulation Model outputs and using a macroscale hydrologic model. The results indicate that, for each data set, the total number decreases with an increase in WRSRI but the LD increases; moreover, for most data sets, the LD is less sensitive within the WRSRI range of [0, 0.6]. The outcomes of this study can enhance our capability in more effectively assessing the resilience of a regional water resources system, especially under changing future socioeconomic and environmental conditions.

Characteristics of Propagation From Meteorological Drought to Hydrological Drought in the Pearl River Basin

“…Ding et al (2020) analyzed the response of vegetation to agricultural drought in different regions of China using PDSI (Palmer drought severity index). S. N. Liu, Shi, & Sivakumar (2020) used socioeconomic drought index (SEDI) to identify and predict the socioeconomic drought events in the Pearl River Basin (PRB).…”

Investigating the Propagation From Meteorological to Hydrological Drought by Introducing the Nonlinear Dependence With Directed Information Transfer Index

“…It may also lead to the decrease of soil water content and induce agricultural drought (Zhou, Li, et al., 2021). In addition, water shortage occurring in/around urban areas may lead to socioeconomic drought (Liu et al., 2020). Therefore, many researchers have focused on the propagation characteristics from meteorological drought to other types of drought (especially for hydrological drought) through evaluating the key indicators such as drought propagation time.…”

Socioeconomic Drought in a Mexican Semi-arid City: Monterrey Metropolitan Area, a Case Study

“…Since there is not a universally accepted methodology to estimate vulnerability to meteorological droughts or any other climatic hazard, numerous approaches have been proposed to characterize socioeconomic droughts, mainly based on indices (Eklund and Seaquist, 2015;Shi et al, 2018;Tu et al, 2018). Some approaches specifically concentrate on aspects of vulnerability and resilience of society to meteorological droughts (Mehran et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2020) and make use of indicators to describe socioeconomic droughts by examining the role and condition of local reservoirs and water demands (Huang et al, 2016;Neri and Magaña, 2016). For instance, a region is considered to be more vulnerable to meteorological droughts if aquifers are overexploited, if there are no plans to reduce water consumption, or if there is no use of climate information for prevention actions (CONAGUA, 2014).…”