Cappellato et al. (2026) Where drought matters most: A crop calendar-aware index for prioritizing irrigated agricultural drought hotspots in Italy

Identification

• Journal: Agricultural Water Management
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-08-11
• Authors: Lorenza Cappellato, Benedetta Moccia, Elena Ridolfi, Fabio Russo, Francesco Napolitano
• DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2026.110688

Research Groups

• Department of Civil, Building and Environmental Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome
• Sapienza School for Advanced Studies, Sapienza University of Rome

Short Summary

This study introduces PRIME (PRiority Index for crop-season drought ManagemEnt), a crop calendar-aware index designed to rank irrigated agricultural areas according to their drought management priority. The index combines drought frequency derived from the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) with irrigated crop distribution and gross production value.

Objective

• To develop an integrated framework for identifying and ranking irrigated agricultural areas according to their drought management priority, considering both climatic hazard and agricultural exposure and economic relevance.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: National scale, covering the entire Italian territory.
• Temporal Scale: Long-term analysis (1951-2022) with a focus on recent trends and patterns.

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI), FAO-56 Penman-Monteith formulation for reference evapotranspiration.
• Data sources: ERA5-Land climate dataset, AIDA crop observation dataset, FAOSTAT agricultural data.

Main Results

• PRIME reveals a heterogeneous spatial ranking of agricultural drought management priority across Italy, reflecting the combined interaction of recurrent growing-season drought frequency, crop distribution, and crop economic value.
• The index identifies three main drought management priority zones: the irrigated plains of northern Italy, agricultural districts in central regions such as Marche and Lazio, and perennial crop systems in southern regions including Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily.

Contributions

• PRIME provides a novel approach for identifying and ranking irrigated agricultural areas according to their drought management priority, considering both climatic hazard and agricultural exposure and economic relevance.
• The index offers a transparent and reproducible prioritization framework that can support drought risk management and water resources planning at the national scale.

Funding

• This research was funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Mission 2) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

Citation

@article{Cappellato2026Where,
  author = {Cappellato, Lorenza and Moccia, Benedetta and Ridolfi, Elena and Russo, Fabio and Napolitano, Francesco},
  title = {Where drought matters most: A crop calendar-aware index for prioritizing irrigated agricultural drought hotspots in Italy},
  journal = {Agricultural Water Management},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1016/j.agwat.2026.110688},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2026.110688}
}