Guidelines for planning and implementing drought mitigation measures

The severe drought events recently occurred all over the world have increased awareness of the harmful impacts they cause. Since drought, unlike other natural disasters, evolves in a long period of time, an effective reduction of related impacts is possible by implementing appropriate mitigation measures planned in advance, according to the indications provided by monitoring systems. In this chapter, the importance of a legislation for a correct drought management, based on a proactive approach, namely including both long-term actions oriented to reduce vulnerability of water supply systems and short-term actions to be implemented during droughts, is discussed. Moreover, the use of multicriteria analysis to compare different mitigation measures and to find the preferable combination of long and short-term actions is recommended. Finally, a framework for a timely implementation of drought mitigation measures and the adoption of an effective monitoring system for the evaluation of drought risk is presented.