Vulnerabilidad y sequíasmetodología de evaluación y análisis a escala de demarcación hidrográfica

Abstract

In last decades, the concept of vulnerability has emerged as a key element in drought risk mitigation and research strategies by identifying the causes and conditions that turns this decrease in precipitation into impacts on society. However, despite the progress made in recent years, vulnerability assessment methodologies need to be further developed in order to design operational frameworks that allow their application. This paper draws on the IPCC (2007, 2012) proposal on vulnerability components (exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity) and proposes a methodology for both assessing and analyzing drought vulnerability at the River Basin District level. This methodology includes two important novelties: on the one hand, the different spatial and temporal scales used in hydrological planning are included, and on the other, the economic, institutional, social and technological aspects are included along with the conventional physical aspects into the assessment of vulnerability. In this way, the assessment is concretized in the calculation of a Drought Vulnerability Index (DVI) and in the proposal a series of techniques for the interpretation and analysis of the resulting values which allows not only to know which areas are most vulnerable but also to investigate the causes of such vulnerability.