ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Droughts produce a complex web of impacts in many socioeconomic sectors. In recent years, there has been a spike of activity in the assessment of vulnerability to drought, motivated by an increased awareness of the importance of risk mitigation and drought management. At a pan-European level, vulnerability to drought comprises many elements and unfolds in different ways depending on sectors. At that scale, however, a too broad definition of the assessment could hamper the production of results useful to decision makers, who need to understand where and why action is needed. In this paper, we use vulnerability situations to delimit the scope of the regional assessment. The starting point for the selection and analysis of vulnerability situations is found in the historic drought impacts identified in the European Drought Impacts Report Inventory (EDII). Past impacts help to identify a) for which systems vulnerability needs to be assessed and b) to what specific perturbation are they vulnerable. To illustrate the approach, the vulnerability to drought of the industrial sector is considered.
