Drought Vulnerability Assessment SOW

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assessment. Here earthquake damage impacts are assessed for vulnerable assets such as residential housing by measuring the structural damage (or insured dollar damage) to many residential structures of a certain design across a range of shaking intensities. As sufficient data is collected (i.e. the performance of many houses in several earthquakes) so the damage functions begin to reliably describe expected damages in specified shaking intensities. When aggregated, the results of an assessment using this approach can be used to estimate future maximum probable dollar losses in a city or region for all or specified building types and to define where, and for what vulnerable assets mitigation resources should be focused. The spatial element might define where shaking intensities tend to be greatest (e.g. unconsolidated ground conditions), or where the greatest number of buildings have yet to be seismically retrofit, or where both these align (greatest overall risk). At the local scale, such an assessment can encourage mitigation actions such as seismic retrofit of individual houses or purchase of individual insurance. Similarly, drought damage functions built over time or developed from backcasting (where historical data support this) will enable the state to develop planning tools to prioritize mitigation efforts, predict losses, identify opportunities for developing adaptive capacities, and develop resources to educate and encourage sensible planning. In our suggested approach the use of drought indices replaces shaking intensities (e.g. MMI V, VI or VII) with, for example, mild, moderate, severe, or extreme drought. As we begin to develop a comprehensive database of impacts to vulnerable assets across sectors at various degrees of drought (using the appropriate drought index) we will create opportunities to quantifiably assess drought risk, understand the likely impacts of mitigation efforts, and develop a higher spatio - temporal understanding of drought risk. The temporal aspect will be possible due to the properties of the indices which evaluate the progression of drought and crossing of thresholds (e.g. moderate to severe) over time. AMEC will engage with Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University to ensure drought indices are being applied appropriately. For this study, implementation of the approach outlined above will necessarily be constrained to backcasting when appropriate data are available. These will typically be on drought impacts that can be correlated with the degree of drought experienced (e.g. 3 months of moderate drought, 2 months of severe drought). We will use the best available data to analyze drought impacts that have been reported for each county, this as a qualitative indicator of drought vulnerability. This will build upon and enhance data that was analyzed in the 2007 update report to the state drought plan (AMEC has successfully used this approach in other local and state mitigation plans). Data on drought severity and timing will be obtained from the Colorado Climate Center. In a related but secondary task we will also make recommendations to the state on a suitable process with which to begin developing the database necessary to support and fully develop this approach in the future. For example, the Drought Impact Reporter is a web - accessible tool developed by the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) to create a drought impact database, facilitating collection, quantification, and mapping of reported drought impacts and to provide access to drought reports through interactive search tools. The tool allows analysis of various past drought impacts on a county by county basis. Working with NDMC we will assess this tool to ascertain whether it can