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| 2. |
- Oriangi, George, et al.
(författare)
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Household resilience to climate change hazards in Uganda
- 2020
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Ingår i: International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management. - : EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LTD. - 1756-8692 .- 1756-8706. ; 12:1, s. 59-73
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose As climate change shocks and stresses increasingly affect urban areas in developing countries, resilience is imperative for the purposes of preparation, recovery and adaptation. This study aims to investigate demographic characteristics and social networks that influence the household capacity to prepare, recover and adapt when faced with prolonged droughts or erratic rainfall events in Mbale municipality in Eastern Uganda. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional research design was used to elicit subjective opinions. Previous studies indicate the importance of subjective approaches for measuring social resilience but their use has not been well explored in the context of quantifying urban resilience to climate change shocks and stresses. This study uses 389 structured household interviews to capture demographic characteristics, social networks and resilience capacities. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for analysis. Findings The ability of low-income households to meet their daily expenditure needs, household size, and networks with relatives and non government organizations (NGOs) were significant determinants of preparedness, recovery and adaptation to prolonged droughts or erratic rainfall events. Originality/value Even the low-income households are substantially more likely to prepare for and recover from prolonged droughts or erratic rainfall events if they can meet their daily expenditure needs. This finding is noteworthy because the poorest in society are generally the most vulnerable to hazards.
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| 3. |
- Breinl, Korbinian, et al.
(författare)
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Extreme dry and wet spells face changes in their duration and timing
- 2020
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9326. ; 15:7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Dry spells are sequences of days without precipitation. They can have negative implications for societies, including water security and agriculture. For example, changes in their duration and within-year timing can pose a threat to food production and wildfire risk. Conversely, wet spells are sequences of days with precipitation above a certain threshold, and changes in their duration and within-year timing can impact agriculture, flooding or the prevalence of water-related vector-borne diseases. Here we assess changes in the duration and within-year timing of extreme dry and wet spells over 60 years (1958-2017) using a consistent global land surface precipitation dataset of 5093 rain gauge locations. The dataset allowed for detailed spatial analyses of the United States, Europe and Australia. While many locations exhibit statistically significant changes in the duration of extreme dry and wet spells, the changes in the within-year timing are less often significant. Our results show consistencies with observations and projections from state-of-the-art climate and water resources research. In addition, we provide new insights regarding trends in the timing of extreme dry and wet spells, an aspect being equally important for possible future implications of extremes in a changing climate, which has not yet received the same level of attention and is characterized by larger uncertainty.
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| 4. |
- Yu, David J., et al.
(författare)
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On capturing human agency and methodological interdisciplinarity in socio-hydrology research
- 2022
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Ingår i: Hydrological Sciences Journal. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0262-6667 .- 2150-3435. ; 67:13, s. 1905-1916
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Socio-hydrology has expanded and been effective in exposing the hydrological community to ideas and approaches from other scientific disciplines, and social sciences in particular. Yet it still has much to explore regarding how to capture human agency and how to combine different methods and disciplinary views from both the hydrological and the social sciences to develop knowledge. A useful starting ground is noting that the complexity of human–water relations is due to interactions not only across spatial and temporal scales but also across different organizational levels of social systems. This calls for consideration of another analytical scale, the human organizational scale, and interdisciplinarity in study methods. Based on the papers published in this journal’s Special Issue Advancing Socio-hydrology over 2019–2022, this paper illuminates how the understanding of coupled human–water systems can be strengthened by capturing the multi-level nature of human decision making and by applying an interdisciplinary multi-method approach.
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| 5. |
- Lindersson, Sara, et al.
(författare)
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The wider the gap between rich and poor the higher the flood mortality
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Nature. - 2398-9629.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Economic inequality is rising within many countries globally, and this can significantly influence the social vulnerability to natural hazards. We analysed income inequality and flood disasters in 67 middle- and high-income countries between 1990 and 2018 and found that unequal countries tend to suffer more flood fatalities. This study integrates geocoded mortality records from 573 major flood disasters with population and economic data to perform generalized linear mixed regression modelling. Our results show that the significant association between income inequality and flood mortality persists after accounting for the per-capita real gross domestic product, population size in flood-affected regions and other potentially confounding variables. The protective effect of increasing gross domestic product disappeared when accounting for income inequality and population size in flood-affected regions. On the basis of our results, we argue that the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth deserves more attention within international disaster-risk research and policy arenas.
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| 6. |
- Jaramillo, Fernando, et al.
(författare)
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Priorities and Interactions of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with Focus on Wetlands
- 2019
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Ingår i: Water. - : MDPI. - 2073-4441. ; 11:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wetlands are often vital physical and social components of a country’s natural capital, as well as providers of ecosystem services to local and national communities. We performed a network analysis to prioritize Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for sustainable development in iconic wetlands and wetlandscapes around the world. The analysis was based on the information and perceptions on 45 wetlandscapes worldwide by 49 wetland researchers of the Global Wetland Ecohydrological Network (GWEN). We identified three 2030 Agenda targets of high priority across the wetlandscapes needed to achieve sustainable development: Target 6.3—“Improve water quality”; 2.4—“Sustainable food production”; and 12.2—“Sustainable management of resources”. Moreover, we found specific feedback mechanisms and synergies between SDG targets in the context of wetlands. The most consistent reinforcing interactions were the influence of Target 12.2 on 8.4—“Efficient resource consumption”; and that of Target 6.3 on 12.2. The wetlandscapes could be differentiated in four bundles of distinctive priority SDG-targets: “Basic human needs”, “Sustainable tourism”, “Environmental impact in urban wetlands”, and “Improving and conserving environment”. In general, we find that the SDG groups, targets, and interactions stress that maintaining good water quality and a “wise use” of wetlandscapes are vital to attaining sustainable development within these sensitive ecosystems.
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| 7. |
- Blösch, Günter, et al.
(författare)
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Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) - a community perspective
- 2019
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Ingår i: Hydrological Sciences Journal. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0262-6667 .- 2150-3435. ; 64:10, s. 1141-1158
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused on the process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come.
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| 8. |
- Mondino, Elena, 1993-
(författare)
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Changes in Hydrological Risk Perception and Implications for Disaster Risk Reduction
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Economic losses caused by hydrological extremes, such as floods and droughts, are exacerbating because of increased anthropogenic activities and global environmental changes. Understanding how individuals and communities interact with hydrological extremes thus becomes fundamental to develop effective strategies for disaster risk reduction. Risk perception plays an important role in determining how individuals and communities respond to the occurrence of an extreme event. This thesis aims at addressing aspects of risk perception that remain largely unknown. They include: i) how flood risk perceptions change over time, ii) the role of previous experiences, and iii) how the perception of flood risk relates to the perception of other natural hazards, such as droughts. The work is based on survey data collected in different study areas – both in Italy and Sweden at the local and national scales – via longitudinal as well as cross-sectional approaches. In relation to the three main objectives, this thesis found that: i) flood risk perceptions evolve differently over time depending on social groups; ii) different types of previous experiences with floods directly influence specific facets of risk perception, with knowledge deriving from the experience also playing an important role; iii) flood risk perception is heavily intertwined with drought risk perception. These results have policy and theoretical implications. Concerning the former, they can inform disaster risk reduction efforts in terms of risk communication and promote an integrated management of hydrological risk. As for the latter, they stress the importance of taking social heterogeneity into account when modelling the interaction between the social and the hydrological spheres, as this can influence the community’s response to extreme events. Fostering human adaptation to climate extremes is a priority. This thesis argues that adaptation can be achieved by promoting the awareness that not only are we at risk, but also that we have the means to address the risk.
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| 9. |
- Rusca, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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Unprecedented droughts are expected to exacerbate urban inequalities in Southern Africa
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nature Climate Change. - : Springer Nature. - 1758-678X .- 1758-6798. ; 13:1, s. 98-105
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change-related drought risks are intensifying in many urban areas, making stakes particularly high in contexts of severe vulnerability. Yet, how social power, differential agency and economic visions will shape societal responses to droughts remains poorly understood. Here, we build a social-environmental scenario of the possible impacts of an unprecedented drought in Maputo, which epitomizes a Southern African city with highly uneven development and differential vulnerability across urban areas. To build the scenario, we draw on theoretical insights from critical social sciences and take Cape Town (2015–2017) as a case-in-point of a locally unprecedented drought in Southern Africa. We show that future droughts in Southern Africa will probably polarize urban inequalities, generate localized public health crises and regress progress in water access. Climate policies must address these inequalities and develop equitable water distribution and conservation measures to ensure sustainable and inclusive adaptation to future droughts.
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| 10. |
- Shyrokaya, Anastasiya, et al.
(författare)
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Advances and gaps in the science and practice of impact‐based forecasting of droughts
- 2023
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Ingår i: WIREs Water. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2049-1948.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Advances in impact modeling and numerical weather forecasting have allowed accurate drought monitoring and skilful forecasts that can drive decisions at the regional scale. State-of-the-art drought early-warning systems are currently based on statistical drought indicators, which do not account for dynamic regional vulnerabilities, and hence neglect the socio-economic impact for initiating actions. The transition from conventional physical forecasts of droughts toward impact-based forecasting (IbF) is a recent paradigm shift in early warning services, to ultimately bridge the gap between science and action. The demand to generate predictions of “what the weather will do” underpins the rising interest in drought IbF across all weather-sensitive sectors. Despite the large expected socio-economic benefits, migrating to this new paradigm presents myriad challenges. In this article, we provide a comprehensive overview of drought IbF, outlining the progress made in the field. Additionally, we present a road map highlighting current challenges and limitations in the science and practice of drought IbF and possible ways forward. We identify seven scientific and practical challenges/limitations: the contextual challenge (inadequate accounting for the spatio-sectoral dynamics of vulnerability and exposure), the human-water feedbacks challenge (neglecting how human activities influence the propagation of drought), the typology challenge (oversimplifying drought typology to meteorological), the model challenge (reliance on mainstream machine learning models), and the data challenge (mainly textual) with the linked sectoral and geographical limitations. Our vision is to facilitate the progress of drought IbF and its use in making informed and timely decisions on mitigation measures, thus minimizing the drought impacts globally.
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