Climate change is continuing globally and in Europe and droughts are increasing in frequency and intensity in many regions. In Europe, the strongest increase in drought frequency and/or severity is projected for southern Europe, where competition between different water users, such as agriculture, industry, tourism and households, is likely to increase.
The planned support service is aiming to support member states to enhance the preparedness for droughts through improving the knowledge on drought risk in the region. National efforts have been done until now on drought risk assessment. The approaches and the applied methods for evaluation of the drought risk are, however, different country by country. The planned training would let the participants exchange experiences on best practices and get information on recent developments.
The training content and the training materials could improve managing the drought related risks in the member states and support member states in the drought risk assessment process.
Following the European Union Water Framework Directive and the Communication on Water Scarcity and Drought, drought strategies were developed in the EU member states. Many investigations deal with risk assessments nowadays. For instance, one of the main objectives of the ongoing DRiDanube project is to enhance drought resilience in the Danube region by introducing recently developed monitoring and risk assessment tools. Following a transnational approach, DRiDanube will harmonize the currently heterogeneous methodologies for risk and impact assessment. Users’ capacities at different levels (policy, professional, stakeholder) in the management cycle will be strengthened through sharing experiences and project learning interactions.
The main objective of the planned training course is to exchange experiences in methods applied for drought risk assessment and to explore best practices and the recently developed procedures. The output of the training course will support the member states in the drought risk assessment process. It will imply a certain coherence and harmonization on the topic.