Das Projekt "Interpretation of hydrological and meteorological drought indices according to their temporal and spatial distribution in Switzerland" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Universität Zürich, Geographisches Institut durchgeführt. In the course of a cooperative project between the University of Zurich, ETH, WSL and the University of Freiburg, a first prototype of an information platform for droughts will be developed. Thus, it is necessary to evaluate different hydrological regimes to derive the sensitivity of catchments to droughts. In the scope of this subproject a wide range of hydrological and meteorological drought indices are tested for approximately 50 mesoscale catchments in Switzerland. These indices are based on precipitation, temperature and/or runoff. The aim is to identify more (or less) appropriate indices as a description of catchment behavior. The indices will also be related to various catchment characteristics and the correlation among the indices themselves will be studied. Finally the catchments are classified in terms of their sensitivity to droughts by using a cluster analysis.