Sustainability nexus analytics, informatics, and data (AID): Drought

Drought occurs globally and can have deleterious effects on built and natural systems and societies. With the increasing human footprint on our planet, so has increased the anthropogenic influence on drought and water scarcity, leading to the development of notions of “anthropogenic drought” and “water bankruptcy”. Understanding the human dimension of drought is complex and requires a data-driven nexus approach to better understand the involved processes and address the implications of water deficits around the world. Just as it transcends scales and geographical boundaries, drought is neither restricted to a single hydrologic state in the water cycle nor are its effects confined to one sector. Drought impacts the water, energy, and food sectors, ecosystem services, socioeconomics, public policy, politics, etc. from local to regional and global scales. We argue that drought mitigation strategies and policy developments must be addressed with a multidisciplinary perspective that benefits from a nexus approach rooted in analytics, informatics, and data (AID). The United Nations University (UNU) Sustainability AID Programme employs such an approach to aid the monitoring, forecasting, and projection of drought, both from climatic and anthropogenic perspectives, and its multifaceted impacts across a variety of sectors and spatiotemporal scales. After a broad overview of this UNU Programme’s vision, and to support stakeholders and decision-makers, we present a drought resource database for drought-related information, data, and analysis tools. Our aim is not to compile an exhaustive list of all available data and tools. Instead, we prioritize mature datasets and AID tools while actively highlighting opportunities to develop new data and tools, fostering nexus research.