This review seeks to enhance the understanding of the critical concepts of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience within the context of global environmental challenges, with a particular focus on climate change. Climate change is characterized by rising global temperatures and an increase in extreme weather events, making the comprehension and addressing of these concepts crucial for effective adaptation strategies. Despite widespread recognition of the interconnectedness of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience, there remains a gap in a comprehensive understanding of how these concepts interrelate. Through synthesizing existing literature, this review provides a detailed examination of their definitions and the interrelationships among vulnerability, adaptation, resilience, and climate-related disasters. Additionally, it explores the impact of climate change on future disaster risk reduction efforts by analyzing the nexus between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction. Key findings highlight the necessity of incorporating social, institutional, economic, and environmental factors into adaptation planning and call for innovative approaches to boost adaptive capacity and resilience. This review not only furthers the discourse in research, policy, and practice in this vital area but also offers strategic insights for developing more resilient and adaptive societies amidst the challenges posed by climate change.

High spatial and temporal variation in precipitation in South Korea leads to an increase in the frequency and duration of drought. In this study, the spatial characteristics of temporal trends for precipitation and drought severity time series were analyzed at 55 stations across South Korea for the period 1980–2015. This study also reviewed the usefulness of different trend tests while addressing the issue of serial correlation, which has often received less attention in previous studies. Results showed that most significant trends in precipitation were detected along the south coast of South Korea, especially during winter, late spring and summer, whereas no significant trend was detected in annual precipitation. The Sen’s slope of the trends increased from January to August and decreased from August onward. Principal component analysis applied on Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) at a 12-month time scale divides the whole of South Korea into four subregions with different temporal behaviors of drought severity. Moreover, drought severity showed a significant increasing trend, mainly on the northeast coast. Drought frequency analysis showed more frequent droughts in late winter, early spring and early autumn, with less frequent droughts in summer.

The serious problems stemming from climate change require an active response it. This study focuses on the role of value factors in action on climate change. Individuals’ values systematically influence the fundamental orientation of their attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, this study analyzes whether six values, namely: ideology, environmental justice, religiosity, personal norms, scientific optimism, and environmentalism, influence action on climate change directly or indirectly, and compares their effects with perception factors’ impact. The results indicate that religiosity decreased action on climate change, whereas personal norms, science and technology (S&T) optimism, and environmentalism increased such action. Among the perception factors, perceived risks and benefits, trust, and knowledge increased action on climate change. Furthermore, perception factors explained action on climate change more than value factors did. Moreover, value factors (i.e., S&T optimism and environmentalism) moderated the impacts of perceived risks, perceived benefits, and negative emotions on action against climate change.

This study aimed to identify factors influencing disaster preparedness capability, measure and compare the relative importance of evaluation indicators of preparedness capability in a rainstorm disaster, and analyze the impact of these factors on disaster preparedness so as to improve disaster preparedness capability. The evaluation model was proposed by constructing the target level (the first level) as an indicator system; this was divided into four indicators (the second level): planning, organization, equipment, and education and exercise, and 14 tertiary evaluation indicators (the third level). The validity of the evaluation index system was demonstrated, and the weight of each level was calculated using the Analytic Hierarchical Process and expert survey methods, taking the example of the Zhengzhou “7.20” rainstorm to conduct an empirical analysis of the proposed model. The weak points of disaster preparedness capability were identified. The empirical analysis revealed that organization scored the highest, followed by planning, equipment, and education and exercise, indicating the lack of disaster management equipment and resources, disaster management training, and exercise and public emergency safety education. These results will help in future decision-making, as they provide a clear understanding of what needs to be done to improve disaster preparedness capability.

Food security for the growing global population is closely associated with the variations in agricultural yield at the regional scale. Based on this perspective, the current study was designed to determine the impacts of drought on wheat production in the Punjab province, which is the agricultural hub of Pakistan. Wheat is a staple food in Pakistan, and Punjab provides a major contribution to the total wheat production of the country. Therefore, Punjab is vital to scientific concerns regarding the evaluation of climatic impacts on the annual wheat yield. The current study offers a better understanding of the drought impacts on wheat in Punjab during 2001–2019. The Standardized Precipitation Index was used to assess the impact of drought stress on the wheat yield. Its temporal evolution indicates the recurrent appearance of drought episodes during the wheat cropping season. Furthermore, meteorological drought was noticed in all study years except for 2019. The results reveal that 2002 experienced severe drought conditions. The frequency of drought was calculated as 29% for SPI-12. The relationships between soil moisture, the Standardized Yield Residual Series (SYRS), and the detrended SPI at lags of 1–12 months indicate that zones 1 and 2 are more sensitive to dry conditions. The results presented in this study provide evidence to authorities responsible for developing policies in the context of natural hazards, particularly droughts, and for preparing drought mitigation plans and implementing the adaptation strategies to minimize the effects of drought on wheat yields.

The drought along with climate variation has become a serious issue for human society and the ecosystem in the arid region like the Soan basin (the main source of water resources for the capital of Pakistan and the Pothohar arid region). The increasing concerns about drought in the study area have brought about the necessity of spatiotemporal analysis and assessment of the linkage between different drought types for an early warning system. Hence, the streamflow drought index (SDI) and standard precipitation index (SPI) were used for the analysis of the spatiotemporal variations in hydrological and meteorological drought, respectively. Furthermore, statistical approaches, including regression analysis, trend analysis using Mann Kendall, and moving average, have been used for investigation of the linkage between these drought types, the significance of the variations, and lag time identification, respectively. The overall analysis indicated an increase in the frequency of both hydrological and meteorological droughts during the last three decades. Moreover, a strong linkage between hydrological and meteorological droughts was found; and this relationship varied on the spatiotemporal scale. Significant variations between hydrological and meteorological droughts also resulted during the past three (3) decades. These discrepancies would be because of different onset and termination times and specific anthropogenic activities in the selected basin for the minimization of hydrological drought. Conclusively, the present study contributes to comprehending the linkage between hydrological and meteorological droughts and, thus, could have a practical use for local water resource management practices at the basin scale.