Meteo-hydrological precursors of water crisis in the Turin area: a first forecasting and management chain

The Piedmont region (north-western Italy) is located between the Alps and the Mediterranean area, two territories that are recognized as climate hotspot regions, showing amplified climate change signals and associated with environmental, social and economic impacts.A number of water crisis that affected the Italian territory in the last twenty years exacerbated conflicts in different territories with regard to the priority use of water resource. The recent drought events (2017, 2021, and 2022) have seen areas not normally characterized by this type of phenomenon, such as the Piedmont region, go into crisis, involving all water users and human activities.In this framework, there is a renewed urgency for improved drought monitoring, forecasting and assessment methods, that will allow for better anticipation and preparation and will lead to better management practices, in order to reduce the vulnerability of society to drought and its subsequent impacts.As drought can be defined in a number of ways and the determination of drought magnitude and impacts can be quite complex, the top scientific priority and social challenge are the identification of meteo-hydrological precursors of water crises. This will lead from meteo-hydrological drought to socio-economic drought and drive water management and decision-making with a strong scientific basis.In this work we focused on the Turin area and after identifying the events that have sent in crisis the drinking water supply sources, the meteorological data and appropriate drought indexes have been analyzed. Critical thresholds and parameters have been identified and a first combined index, for developing an operational chain that can alert water utilities, stakeholders and mayors reasonably in advance, is proposed.