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As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions, and feedbacks in complex human-water systems leading to flood and drought impacts. Here we present a benchmark dataset containing socio-hydrological data of paired events, i.e. two floods or two droughts that occurred in the same area. The 45 paired events occurred in 42 different study areas and cover a wide range of socio-economic and hydro-climatic conditions. The dataset is unique in covering both floods and droughts, in the number of cases assessed and in the quantity of socio-hydrological data. The benchmark dataset comprises (1) detailed review-style reports about the events and key processes between the two events of a pair; (2) the key data table containing variables that assess the indicators which characterize management shortcomings, hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and impacts of all events; and (3) a table of the indicators of change that indicate the differences between the first and second event of a pair. The advantages of the dataset are that it enables comparative analyses across all the paired events based on the indicators of change and allows for detailed context- and location-specific assessments based on the extensive data and reports of the individual study areas. The dataset can be used by the scientific community for exploratory data analyses, e.g. focused on causal links between risk management; changes in hazard, exposure and vulnerability; and flood or drought impacts. The data can also be used for the development, calibration, and validation of socio-hydrological models. The dataset is available to the public through the GFZ Data Services (Kreibich et al., 2023, 10.5880/GFZ.4.4.2023.001).

Drought management in the United States has traditionally taken form of state-level drought since there is no Federal requirement that requires planning that is specifically drought focused. Overtime, drought planning has become more common practice at the state level, with 46 of the 50 states currently having either a drought mitigation or response plan established. Drought planning is also increasing at the sub-state and local level since state-level drought plans may not adequately reduce drought impacts at smaller scales. Despite the growth of drought planning efforts, drought management typically focuses on crisis management, reactive management approaches during a drought, rather than risk management that focuses on approaches to reduce impacts before a drought period. Successful drought risk management is built upon three pillars: (1) monitoring and early warning; (2) impact and vulnerability assessment; and (3) mitigation, preparedness, and response. This work is separated into three articles, focusing on the second and third pillars of drought risk management. The first article in this dissertation is a risk assessment of urban counties in the United States, providing the foundation for creating an Urban Drought Risk Index. The second article evaluates survey data of land use planners across the United States to understand their perceptions and awareness of drought. The final article uses the findings of a drought-specific Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) workshop (FEMA risk assessment process, focused solely on drought) in the Platte River Basin, NE to evaluate the current drought planning efforts in the study area. The combination of these three articles provide three new and effective opportunities to reduce drought risk at the local levels through increasing the integration of drought planning beyond the traditional drought planning disciplines, which allows for a more comprehensive drought risk management. In addition, appro

Water laws and drought plans are used to prioritize and allocate scarce water resources. Both have historically been human-centric, failing to account for non-human water needs. In this paper, we examine the development of instream flow legislation and the evolution of drought planning to highlight the growing concern for the non-human impacts of water scarcity. Utilizing a new framework for ecological drought, we analyzed five watershed-scale drought plans in southwestern Montana, USA to understand if, and how, the ecological impacts of drought are currently being assessed. We found that while these plans do account for some ecological impacts, it is primarily through the narrow lens of impacts to fish as measured by water temperature and streamflow. The latter is typically based on the same ecological principles used to determine instream flow requirements. We also found that other resource plans in the same watersheds (e.g., Watershed Restoration Plans, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Watershed Assessments or United States Forest Service (USFS) Forest Plans) identify a broader range of ecological drought risks. Given limited resources and the potential for mutual benefits and synergies, we suggest greater integration between various planning processes could result in a more holistic consideration of water needs and uses across the landscape.