Integrated drought risk assessment to support adaptive policymaking in the Netherlands

Mens, Marjolein J. P.; van Rhee, Gigi; Schasfoort, Femke; Kielen, Neeltje

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-1763-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-1763-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Drought vulnerability, risk, and impact assessments: bridging...

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-22-1763-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 5

Research article

|

31 May 2022

Research article |

| 31 May 2022

Integrated drought risk assessment to support adaptive policymaking in the Netherlands

Marjolein J. P. Mens, Gigi van Rhee, Femke Schasfoort, and Neeltje Kielen

Download

Final revised paper (published on 31 May 2022)
Preprint (discussion started on 10 Jan 2022)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

RC1:
'Comment on nhess-2021-407', Anonymous Referee #1, 18 Jan 2022

This article presents the results of a significant effort to develop an integrated risk-based approach to evaluate the costs and benefits of water management and policy decisions with respect to droughts. This is a timely example of the application of such a framework as many water managers are currently performing similar drought risk and impact analyses and turning them into specific (climate adaptation) actions.

As this article illustrates selected use cases from a complex drought risk assessment framework and a larger body of work in a relatively short article, care should be taken to provide enough details or references in the methodological sections, make sure terminology for e.g. the scenarios is used consistently and references to analyses or results that are not discussed in detail are omitted or discussed in more detail.

More specific comments are included in the pdf in Supplement.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-407-RC1
- AC2: 'Reply on RC1', Marjolein Mens, 31 Jan 2022
  
  We thank the reviewer for the positive feedback and constructive comments to improve the manuscript. We will revise the manuscript according to the suggestions made and provide a point-wise rebuttal later. Below we provide a first author response to the main comments. Referee comments are repeated in bold.
  Overall comment. As this article illustrates selected use cases from a complex drought risk assessment framework and a larger body of work in a relatively short article, care should be taken to provide enough details or references in the methodological sections, make sure terminology for e.g. the scenarios is used consistently and references to analyses or results that are not discussed in detail are omitted or discussed in more detail.
  It is true that the manuscript discusses only a selection of the results of a larger study. We will carefully check whether methodological details and references are sufficient for the reader to understand the results, and that references to analyses that are not discussed will be omitted.
  Main comment in pdf. Why exactly were these 5 policy actions selected? Can they be considered representative for the range of policy actions in the "extensive list"?
  We selected five policy actions for this paper from an extensive list of about 150 policy actions. They serve as an example for the applicability of the risk assessment framework. We therefore chose actions that fall into either of two main categories of drought risk policy actions (reduce demand or increase supply) and that have an effect on national drought risk. Furthermore, we omitted local actions and actions aimed at research (e.g. local pilot studies). The presented approach is less suited for local measures that require detailed system knowledge and do not affect regional or national water distribution. We will clarify this in the revised manuscript.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-407-AC2
RC2:
'Comment on nhess-2021-407', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jan 2022

I think that this is a very good paper, well structured, based on robust analyses and methodologies, and reaching interesting and substantial conclusions. Objectives are clear; literature analysis is wide and exhaustive; presentation and explanation of the model is clear as well; data, outcomes, discussion and conclusions are meaningful and presented in a clear and concise way.

Authors made a great, and successful, effort to combine and join different approaches and techniques to identify and estimate impacts, and to measure costs and benefits, building an integrated framework for drought risk assessment.

Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-407-RC2
- AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Marjolein Mens, 31 Jan 2022
  
  We thank the referee for the positive feedback on our manuscript.
  
  Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-2021-407-AC1

Peer review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision | EF: Editorial file upload

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (02 Mar 2022) by Gustavo Naumann

AR by Marjolein Mens on behalf of the Authors (31 Mar 2022) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Apr 2022) by Gustavo Naumann

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Apr 2022)

ED: Publish as is (25 Apr 2022) by Gustavo Naumann

ED: Publish as is (02 May 2022) by Joaquim G. Pinto (Executive editor)

AR by Marjolein Mens on behalf of the Authors (09 May 2022)

Short summary

Many countries have to prepare for droughts by proposing policy actions to increase water supply, reduce water demand, or limit the societal impact. Societal cost–benefit analysis is required to support decision-making for a range of future scenarios, accounting for climate change and socio-economic developments. This paper presents a framework to assess drought policy actions based on quantification of drought risk and exemplifies it for the Netherlands’ drought risk management strategy.