Drought is a pervasive natural hazard, which can profoundly affect ecosystems and societies globally. To strengthen the global community’s resilience to droughts, a multi-dimensional understanding of global drought awareness is imperative. Here we investigate global drought awareness at local (awareness of local droughts in the affected country), remote (awareness of remote droughts in other countries), and global levels (awareness from non-exposed countries). This study uses relevant search activity volumes of a country to drought as a proxy of national-level drought awareness. We find that the recent decade has experienced no change in drought hazard over the globe, but the global community has been increasingly seeking information about drought online, that is, elevated awareness of the global community on drought. We further find that long-lasting droughts enhance local- and global-level awareness and high gross domestic product are associated with remote-level awareness. This study provides an observational evidence of global disparities in the awareness/interest regarding drought, underscoring a continuing role of European nations in enhancing global drought awareness.
Our multi-dimensional analysis showed that drought awareness of the global community is not always contingent upon the drought hazard and characteristics. In the recent decade, certain countries like Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Chile experienced frequent and severe droughts yet exhibit comparatively a low level of both local and remote awareness. Other countries with limited drought occurrences demonstrated heightened remote awareness. Our investigation succeeded in revealing instances where the level of remote awareness surpasses that of local awareness. This discrepancy does not imply a lack of concern among the populace for drought within their respective countries; rather, it underscores the influence of short-lived drought periods on online information search behaviour of the global community.
Individuals worldwide express varying degrees of concern about drought, irrespective of its occurrence in their nations or localities, leading to a discernible pattern of elevated global awareness compared to local awareness. Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium are less susceptible to drought since they have a low level of local and remote awareness. We speculate that a low drought hazard can lead to a low level of awareness and interest of local and remote droughts at the national level. However, the Google Trends data used in this study are at the aggregate-level awareness, indicating a limited explanatory power of actual causes of a low level of drought awareness in these countries. To investigate the actual cause of a low-level of drought awareness, other data, such as survey and interview data, are required.
This study used relevant search activity volumes to drought (a search topic of disaster type) as a proxy of national-level drought awareness. To avoid irrelevant search activity volumes, this study focused on 70 nations with a high search activity volume. While this study used “drought” as a search topic, using other relevant search terms, such as “water storage” and “precipitation deficits”, can be used to explore how the public’s interest and received risk are changed over drought propagations.
Wikipedia and newspapers might be other data source to examine how online information seeking patterns changes during an emerging drought. Daily views of the Wikipedia page have been compared with the Google Trends data26. Daily views of the “Drought” page of Wikipedia were retrieved. Wikipedia has the “Drought” page in 103 languages since July 2015. Daily views of the “Drought” page are available in 87 languages. For temporal resolution matching with the Google Trends data, first the daily views of 87 languages of “Drought” were summed and then the total daily views were averaged over each month. Lastly, the monthly averages of the total daily views were divided by the maximum view from July 2015 through December 2021. The correlation of the daily views and Google Trends showed a low correlation (r = 0.15; Supplementary Fig. 3). This is different from the findings of global earthquake awareness that showed a high correlation between the Google Trends and daily views of the Wikipedia “Earthquake” page. This result suggested diversity in online seeking information activity patterns depending on the characteristics of a disaster of interest.
In this study, relevant search activity volume data were downloaded 10 times on different dates and applied the principal component analysis to the 10 sample data to assess consistency among the data. 18 nations showed inconsistency among the 10 sample data, indicating high uncertainty in the search activity volume data.
The findings of this study were based on the aggregate-level drought awareness, which might have a limited explanatory power of the cause-effect processes between drought hazard and awareness.
Individual- and aggregate-level drought awareness have different patterns due to various socioeconomic factors. Survey and interview data can provide an opportunity to investigate how individuals perceive the risk of local and remote droughts, which can synthesize the findings of this study to advance our understanding of interactions between individual- and aggregative-level awareness. These survey and interview data however are not available over the globe and in real time/continuously because they are costly and time consuming. The findings of this study from the national-level search activity volume data highlight a need for development of the global survey and interview data for drought awareness.
This study proposed a multiple spatial dimensional analysis of drought awareness, introducing local, remote, and global-level awareness. This multi-dimension analysis focused on country-level awareness, which can affect drought awareness at multiple levels. When the averages of precipitation over a large country like Canada, China, Russia, and U.S.A, are used to calculate SPI, precipitation deficits should be severe enough to detect country-level droughts. If droughts are extensive and long-lasting, then people are more likely to seek search relevant information to the ongoing drought. Besides, the Google Trends data provide relative search activity volumes to the maximum search activity volume during the search period (herein 2010–2021). During the onset of a local drought, relevant search activity volumes would be relatively small. Therefore, using the country-level SPI and Google Trends for larger countries guarantees the severity of drought and the significance of relevant search activity volumes, which can reduce uncertainty in measuring the level of local awareness.
On the other hand, it is expected that there are less droughts in larger countries than smaller countries, simply because intrinsic (spatial) variation of precipitation within a large country. For example, if a small region within a larger country experiences a local drought, the proposed methodology would not identify any drought at a national level. Then, any searches within that region would be classified as remote awareness for the country when they experience the local drought. The proposed methods can cause uncertainties of remote awareness estimates, particularly large countries. We further compared relevant search activity volumes during drought with those during non-drought periods, that is, before and after drought events. We found those search activity volumes before and after drought events are relatively low compared with those drought events, indicating that the proposed methods are still a reliable approach to conduct a multi-dimensional study of local and remote awareness.
The comparison between the characteristics of historical droughts and recent occurrences reveals notable similarities at the continental scale except for South America. Despite a high drought hazard, the African countries exhibit comparatively low drought awareness levels. It is worth noting that six African nations (Algeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe) showed inconsistency among the 10 sample data, indicating that additional data, such as survey and interview data, are required for these countries, to determine whether the actual level of drought awareness is low or the actual awareness is high but other socioeconomic factors, such as the limited internet access and educational opportunities, cause a low search activity volume. Our analysis unveiled a lack of a robust correlation between drought vulnerability and awareness, suggesting the influence of additional socioeconomic factors on shaping public awareness. This insight highlights the complexity of the relationship between drought events and awareness levels, urging further exploration of these factors for a more comprehensive understanding.
Our investigation further revealed that countries like Greece, Malaysia, and El Salvador with low susceptibility to drought exhibit a noteworthy interest in searching drought-related queries on the Google platform. This observation aligns seamlessly with existing literature that delves into the impact of a “no-loss” experience, where even nations with minimal drought occurrences like Russia demonstrate heightened awareness and concern. Since 1901, precipitation has increased over Russia.
We observed that after the drought recovery, the search activity volumes about drought decreased but maintained relatively a certain level, contributing to sustained global interest in drought-related topics and resulting in a higher level of remote awareness than before the drought occurrence. This intriguing temporal pattern emerges, indicating that awareness tends to elevate notably in the aftermath of a 3- to 6-month drought recovery period. This temporal lag contributes to the phenomenon wherein certain vulnerable countries display higher remote awareness than local awareness, as information-seeking behaviour intensifies after this recovery interval when the adverse effects are measurable.
Our findings offered valuable insights for crafting targeted interventions in countries characterized by both severe drought conditions and low public awareness. By leveraging our results, policymakers can formulate effective strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of an emerging drought. Firstly, we recommend that the global community should build multiple channels that can report and share an emerging drought. Citizen participatory surveillance systems are costly efficient and reliable, particularly over nations with a low level of local awareness, particularly in the Asian and African countries. These citizen participatory surveillance system can calibrate the public’s perceived risk of the ongoing drought efficiently. Secondly, the global community should revitalize international exchanges programs of researchers and administrative staffs between the European countries and countries in other continents. We found that most of the European countries had a balance between local and remote awareness, indicating their continuing role in enhancing global drought awareness. Lastly, transdisciplinary research efforts should be encouraged to advance our understanding of social response to drought across nations and investigate new drought risk management plans are available with artificial intelligence and big data. These policy recommendations are crucial for sustainable development in a changing climate.
This study not only provides empirical evidence of global disparities in public interest regarding drought but also underscores the significant role developed nations play in shaping information-seeking behaviour on a global scale, drawing from diverse data sources. The latter discovery regarding the influence of developed nations can be attributed to long-standing conditions stemming from socioeconomic development. In societies with less economic advancement, immediate basic needs often take precedence, constraining attention to knowledge-seeking behaviours26. Conversely, residents of more prosperous nations possess greater opportunities for self-actualization through knowledge pursuit. Nonetheless, our results unveil nuances within developing countries, demonstrating that the social response to drought hazard varies among nations with lower socio-economic development.
Sources:
NATURE
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00373-y .
Provided by the IKCEST Disaster Risk Reduction Knowledge Service System
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