The authors propose a new climatic drought index: the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI). The SPEI is based on precipitation and temperature data, and it has the advantage of combining multiscalar character with the capacity to include the effects of temperature variability on drought assessment. The procedure to calculate the index is detailed and involves a climatic water balance, the accumulation of deficit/surplus at different time scales, and adjustment to a log-logistic probability distribution. Mathematically, the SPEI is similar to the standardized precipitation index (SPI), but it includes the role of temperature. Because the SPEI is based on a water balance, it can be compared to the self-calibrated Palmer drought severity index (sc-PDSI). Time series of the three indices were compared for a set of observatories with different climate characteristics, located in different parts of the world. Under global warming conditions, only the sc-PDSI and SPEI identified an...

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A Multiscalar Drought Index Sensitive to Global Warming: The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index

Two studies investigated the tendency of people to be unrealistically optimistic about future life events. In Study 1, 258 college students estimated how much their own chances of experiencing 42 events differed from the chances of their classmates. Overall, they rated their own chances to be above average for positive events and below average for negative events, ps<.001. Cognitive and motivational considerations led to predictions that degree of desirability, perceived probability, personal experience, perceived controllability, and stereotype salience would influence the amount of optimistic bias evoked by different events. All predictions were supported, although the pattern of effects differed for positive and negative events. Study 2 tested the idea that people are unrealistically optimistic because they focus on factors that improve their own chances of achieving desirable outcomes and fail to realize that others may have just as many factors in their favor. Students listed the factors that they thought influenced their own chances of experiencing eight future events. When such lists were read by a second group of students, the amount of unrealistic optimism shown by this second group for the same eight events decreased significantly, although it was not eliminated.

http://psych415.class.uic.edu/Readings/Weinstein,%20Unrealistic%20optimism,%20JPSP,%201980.pdf

Unrealistic optimism about future life events

This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Adaptation, adaptive capacity and vulnerability

Global environmental change and sustainability science increasingly recognize the need to address the consequences of changes taking place in the structure and function of the biosphere. These changes raise questions such as: Who and what are vulnerable to the multiple environmental changes underway, and where? Research demonstrates that vulnerability is registered not by exposure to hazards (perturbations and stresses) alone but also resides in the sensitivity and resilience of the system experiencing such hazards. This recognition requires revisions and enlargements in the basic design of vulnerability assessments, including the capacity to treat coupled human–environment systems and those linkages within and without the systems that affect their vulnerability. A vulnerability framework for the assessment of coupled human–environment systems is presented.

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A framework for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science

There is considerable research interest on the meaning and measurement of resilience from a variety of research perspectives including those from the hazards/disasters and global change communities. The identification of standards and metrics for measuring disaster resilience is one of the challenges faced by local, state, and federal agencies, especially in the United States. This paper provides a new framework, the disaster resilience of place (DROP) model, designed to improve comparative assessments of disaster resilience at the local or community level. A candidate set of variables for implementing the model are also presented as a first step towards its implementation.

A place-based model for understanding community resilience to natural disasters

This paper examines recent shifts in technical thinking which have altered prevailing views on how to assess the adequacy of fresh water supplies to satisfy future demand. From a study of recent national and international documents at least six concepts of water resources and its uses can be shown to be undergoing significant change.



They are related to: constraints on drinking water adequacy; the alternatives to increasing physical supply; the relationship of population growth to industrial and agricultural water use; the meaning of flood and drought disasters; the risks to aquatic ecosystems; and the implications of possible climatic changes.



The emphasis in assessment has in turn shifted from an estimation of total supply and withdrawal towards an estimation of the effects on water quality and distribution resulting from changes in water and land use. The author shows that assessments of future supplies will have to take into account not only the total volume of water as related to growing demand but also an examination of the social and political conditions within which fundamental choices as to technologies and water management strategies will take place.



Cet article etudie les recents changements dans le mode de pensee technique qui ont modifie les vues etablies sur la maniere d'evaluer la qualite des approvisionnements en eau douce en vue de repondre a la demande future. Partant de l'etude de documents nationaux et internationaux, il ressort au moins six concepts en matiere de ressources en eau et l'on peut demontrer que ses utilisations subissent actuellement de profonds changements. Ces concepts ont trait a des contraintes concernant la qualite de l'eau potable, les differents moyens d'augmenter l'approvisionnement, la relation entre la croissance demographique et l'utilisation de l'eau a des fins industrielles et agriculturales; la signification des desastres causes par les inondations et la secheresse, les risques qu'encourent les ecosystemes aquatiques et les implications de changements climatiques eventuels. A son tour, l'emphase dans l'evaluation est passee d'une estimation de l'approvisionnement total et du soutirage a une estimation des effets sur la qualite et les reseaux d'approvisionnement de l'eau resultant de changements dans l'utilisation de l'eau et des sols.



L'auteur demontre que les evaluations des approvisionnements futurs tiendront compte non seulement du volume total de l'eau par rapport a la demande croissante mais aussi d'un examen des conditions sociales et politiques dans lesquelles se feront des choix fondamentaux en ce qui concerne les technologies et les strategies de gestion des ressources en eau.



Este articulo examina los cambios recientes que alteran el enfoque tecnico de como evaluar la suficiencia del suministro de agua dulce para satisfacer la demands futura. Del estudio de documentos recientes, nacionales e internacionales, se puede notar que por lo menos seis conceptos sobre recursos de agua y su uso estan cambiando en forma significativa. Ellos son: restricciones sobre suficiencia de agua potable; alternativas al aumento quantitativo del suministro; la relacion del crecimiento de poblacion al uso de agua en la industria y la agricultura; el significado de desastres de inundacion y sequia; los riesgos del ecosistema acuatico; y los efectos sobre posibles cambios climaticos.



El enfasis en la evaluacion a cambiado de la estimacion del suministro y uso total hacia la estimacion de los aspectos de la calidad de agua y su distribucion resultantes de los cambios en el uso de agua y tierras. El autor muestra que la evaluacion del suministro futuro tomara en cuenta no solamente el volumen total de agua en relacion a la demanda creciente, sino tambien el examen de las condiciones sociales y politicas que influyen las decisiones fundamentales sobre la seleccion de technologias y la estrategia de la administracion de recursos de agua.

Water Resource Adequacy: Illusion and Reality

Forecasting of individual floods promotes wise human use of flood-plains in the United States in two ways. It prevents some losses which otherwise would result from floods. It is essential to the efficient operation of storage-reservoirs for flood-control. Substantial savings accrue from the present forecasting system for both purposes, but full realization of the potentialities of forecasting is hampered by lack of hydrologic data and techniques, and by lack of requisite support for making the forecast and for assuring intelligent use of the forecast.

Economic aspects of flood‐forecasting

The need for improved institutional arrangements has been recognized for many years; prior to Mar del Plata, and most recently at Dublin and Rio. Consensus seems to be em erging that a new global organization should be created from representatives of local, national, regional and international organizations embracing environmental, economic and political concerns. It would promote exchange of information and experience to define issues and methods deserving of attention, and would critically appraise previous actions in selected sectors and areas of water management. It should not duplicate existing organizations .

Gilbert F. White

Papers

Water Resource Adequacy: Illusion and Reality

Economic aspects of flood‐forecasting

Critical Analysis of Existing Institutional Arrangements

Water, Health and Society: Selected Papers by Abel Wolman

Edward a. ackerman, 1911–1973