Recent drought and flood events, and their impacts, have highlighted the complexity of these disasters. Land use change, groundwater abstraction, river management, climate change, and other human influences often make flood and drought hazards more severe, and socio-economic changes in society increase both exposure and vulnerability to these hazards in many areas around the world. Adaptation measures and risk management, such as (sub)surface storage and early-warning systems, could increase resilience to both extremes, but they need to be managed well to prevent unintentional consequences possibly leading to a chain of feedbacks between people and hydrological extremes. To mitigate flood and drought risk in the future, better understanding and management of the interlinkages between hydrological extremes and society is crucial.
Recent decades have seen many scientific developments in this area related to the fields of hydrosociology and socio-hydrology, but also from an Integrated Water Resource Management perspective, risk analysis frameworks, and climate change impact research. Exciting new research on the feedbacks between people and hydrological extremes is being done on:
• Impact and risk modeling & forecasting
• Estimations of exposure and vulnerability
• Influence of human activities on hazards and risks
• Compound events and cascading vulnerabilities
• (Un)intentional influences of flood and drought management
• Co-development of policies, collaborative decision making and communication with stakeholders
This research requires new conceptual frameworks and inter- or transdisciplinary approaches (i.e. integrating natural and social science perspectives and methodologies; using quantitative and qualitative data; new ways of interacting with stakeholders). In this Research Topic on Hydrological Extremes & Society, we intend to showcase this research. We aim to cover all aspects of the relationship between droughts and/or floods and people.
We are open to all contributions related to the interactions between people and floods and/or droughts, but we especially encourage submissions on the following topics:
• New conceptualizations of the interlinkages and feedbacks between hydrological extremes and society.
• Exploration of new datasets that allow exploration of all aspects of flood and/or drought risk and their impacts.
• Development of new methods and tools to increase our understanding of the processes underlying the interactions between people and floods and/or droughts.
• Development of dynamic models able to capture temporal and spatial changes in the human-water system leading to flooding and/or drought risks.
• Studies in underexplored regions of the world (Asia, Africa, Latin-America, Island states)
• Investigation of management options that are suitable for one or both extremes, for example using groundwater storage.
Manuscripts focusing on drought monitoring and prediction should be directed to our Research Topic
Challenges of Hydrological Drought Monitoring and Prediction