Review of the state of research on drought - What we do and do not know about drought (SC220020)

We expect climate change to affect the magnitude and frequency of future drought events. This will expose the weaknesses in our current water resource management approaches and add additional uncertainty to future planning and decision making.

We need to respond to this challenge and fill the gaps in our knowledge. The Environment Agency therefore proposes the collation of the latest information about drought in England with reference to UK and international where relevant. The review will seek to answer:

• What do we know about drought?
• What don't we know about drought that we should know?
• How can we improve our understanding of drought?

The aim is to review the state of our understanding of drought, including lessons from the past and

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both current and future impacts to provide new insights and a consistent basis for future work. The project will be managed by the Environment Agency who will award and coordinate several separate contracts to different suppliers, each of whom is an internationally recognised expert in their field. The contracts will be a mixture of thematic reviews, workshop(s), quick-win research projects and cross-cutting topic reviews. The Environment Agency will then consolidate the essays into a single, summary report that it will lead on the writing of.