1. Guidelines for Drought Management Plans &
National Consultation dialogues
Activity 2.1 & 2.2
Elena Fatulova
2nd IDMP CEE Workshop
Ljubljana, 8 – 9 April 2014

2. Partners & Outputs
• Aim of Act. 2.1 – to develop Guidelines for Drought
Management Plans (DMPs) – the main instrument for
implementation of drought policy based on risk
management
• 10 CEE countries involved in the activity (BL, CZ, HU, LT,
MO, PL, RO, SK, SLO, UA)
• Partners – national GWPs and experts from individual
countries
• Final output – Guidelines for DMPs including examples of
its application within the region (e.g. Slovak Study report)

3. • First phase:
 First draft presented – Hodrusa Hamre
 Execution of the Slovak case study
 Development of the Slovak Study Report – March 2014
– completed in accordance with the plan
 Draft of the Guidelines for DMPs – June 2014
• Second phase:
 1 July 2014 - draft of the Guidelines sent for completion
and comments to the involved countries
 31 December 2014 – national examples and comments
provided
 April 2015 – final output – Guidelines for DMPs
Progress Report

4. Approach - principles
• Conformity with EU drought policy developed within
Common Strategy for Implementation of Water
Framework Directive – based on drought risk
management approach
• Consistency with EU WFD – Drought Management
Plan a part of River Basin Management plans
• Focus on the national level
• Harmonization of approaches within the CEE region

5. Basic documents
General guidelines:
• Drought Management Plan Report Including Agricultural,
Drought Indicators and Climate Change (Report 2007)
• Guidelines for National Drought management Policies
and Preparedness Plans (Donald A.Wilhite) for the
WMO/GWP IDMP
EU policy document:
• A Blueprint to Safeguard Europe's Water Resources”
COM (2012) 673 final

6. Output, sources
Output (Guidelines content):
- Description of the generalized procedure for development
of the DMPs based on harmonized approach
- Accompanied with the national examples of the key DMP
elements (indicators, thresholds, warning system,
organizational structure) in line with EU drought policy
Sources:
• Slovak Study report
• National experiences – examples of the chosen elements
provided by involved countries during the second phase
• Outputs from other activities of the IDM Programme

7. DMP – main elements
• Indicators and thresholds establishing onset, ending,
and severity levels of the exceptional circumstances
(prolonged drought) – meteorological, hydrological,
agricultural, socioeconomic (impact indicators)
• Measures to be taken in each drought phase in order
to prevent deterioration of water status and to
mitigate negative drought effects
• Organizational framework to deal with drought and
subsequent revision and updating of the existing
drought management plan

8. Slovak case study
• Evaluation of the drought event 2011-2012
• Real data from monitoring used
• Partners from water sector and agricultural sector
(experts)
• Data from drought impact assessment (e.g. fish
mortality, ecological status, wetlands) are missing
(information from the Ministry)
• Some stakeholders refused to provide data (e.g.
energy production company)

9. Slovak Study Report
Indicators:
 Precipitation and air temperature
 River flow
 Groundwater level and spring-discharge
 Soil water balance
Thresholds for drought classification:
 Normal status
 Pre-alert status
 Alert status
 Emergency status

10. Thresholds - Precipitation

11. Thresholds - River flow
1. quantile (120 to 80 % of Qmes61-2000 - normal status of water bearing)
2. quantile (80 to 40 % of Qmes61-2000 – subnormal status of water bearing)
3. quantile (less than 40 % of Qmes61-2000- critical value of water bearing status

12. Thresholds – groundwater level
• Fig. 2 Groundwater monitoring point No. 10, hydrological year 2012

13. Thresholds – soil water balance
Drought degree Extreme
drought
Severe drought Moderate
drought
Normal drought
Probability interval
[%]
≤ 2% 2.1% to 10% 10.1% to 25% 25.1% to 50%
ASWI interval [–] ≤ –1.8 –1.8 to –1.151 –1.15 to –0.721 -0.72 to 0
Drought degree
Extreme
drought
Very severe
drought
Severe drought Normal drought
Probability interval
[%]
≤ 2% 2% to 10% 10.1% to 25% 25.1% to 50%
ASWICUM interval
[–]
≤ –300 –299 to –200 –199 to –100 -99 to 0
Available soil water index
Cumulative available soil water index

14. Slovak Study Report
Measures:
• organizational – all drought status
• operational – pre-alert, alert, emergency status
• preventive – normal status
- measures for improvement of water governance
- measures focused on increasing of resistance against
drought and mitigation of drought adverse impacts
- action plan for science and research drought
program

15. DMP – organizational structure

16. Uncertainties, gaps
• Drought is not considered as a relevant issue
• No state body has been officially charged with the
production of the Drought management plan within the
second planning cycle of preparation of RBMPs
• Absence of drought impact indicators
• Monitoring system is not sufficient for running of reliable
drought early warning system and has to be upgraded
• Thresholds and early warning system have not been
tested

17. Act. 2.2 National consultation dialogues
First National Consultation dialogues:
• 6 countries (CZ, HU, LT, MO,SK, UA – in 2013
• 4 countries (PO, RO, SLO, BL) – in 2014
General objective - development of DMP:
• To gather the drought experts and representatives
from competent authorities
• To inform about the objectives of IDMP
• To discuss the answers from the Questionnaire

18. Act. 2.2 National consultations
Second National Consultation dialogues – in 2014:
General objective – provide input for the Guidelines for
Drought management plans:
- Organizational framework – draft of drought working
group (schematic) and its mandate
- Early warning system – short information on indicators
and thresholds, drought stages
- Impact assessment – impact information system
- Creation of drought hazard and Water Scarcity Risk maps

19. Plans - continuation
• To develop the first draft of the Guidelines – activity
leader – 30 June 2014 on the base:
- Slovak study report
- Results of demonstration projects
- Communication with GWPs partners – comments to
Guidelines contents, answers on specific questions –
terminology, early warning system (daily base?)
• To send the draft of the Guidelines to the involved
partners (GWPs) for comments and providing national
experiences for the chosen DMP elements – 1 July 2014

20. Plans - continuation
• To organize National Consultation dialogues (after June
2014) with the aim to discus the draft of the Guidelines and
provide national experiences in line with EU strategy:
to develop of organizational structure for drought
management (all partners and sector identified in the
questionnaire) – competent authority, working group
(example provided in Slovak Study Report)
to provide national examples of development of the key
elements of DMP – Annex of the Guidelines
• New template for NCD will be prepared – end of June
• To provide comments and input for Guidelines – 31
December 2014

21. Questions
• How could be defined meteorological, agricultural,
hydrological, socioeconomic drought referring to
working definition: „Drought is a natural phenomenon. It
is a temporary, negative and severe deviation along a
significant time period and over a large region from average
precipitation values (a rainfall deficit), which might lead to
meteorological, agricultural, hydrological and socioeconomic
drought, depending on its severity and duration“
• How often should be assessment of indicators for
early warnings updated - daily, weekly?

22. Contact:
Elena Fatulova, GWP Slovakia
elena.fatulova@gmail.com
Thank you for your attention