Growing water scarcity in agriculture is an increasing problem and future climate predictions enhance drought risks for agricultural production. For assessing irrigation as a measure to increase agricultural water security a generalized stochastic approach for a spatial distributed estimation of future irrigation water demand is proposed, which ensures safe yields and a high water productivity at the same time.

The paper identifies the opportunities and limits of flood early warning in small catchments. Flood early warning for small, fast-responding catchments usually need to include rainfall forecasts. First, the demands of potential users of warning products are assessed. Second, the quality and limitations of rainfall forecasts (emerging from meteorological forecasting uncertainty) are investigated. Third, different flood forecasting techniques are compared.