 In the current human-modified world, also known as the Anthropocene, the state of water stores and fluxes has become dependent on both human and natural processes. Water deficits or droughts, caused by complex interactions between meteorological anomalies, land surface processes, and human inflows, outflows, and storage changes, are the result of this interplay. Due to our inability to adequately analyze and manage drought in many places, it is clear that there are gaps in our understanding and inadequate data and tools. This calls for a new framework for drought definitions and research. Drought definitions must be revised to explicitly include human processes driving and modifying soil moisture drought and hydrological drought development. We propose several recommendations for robust drought definitions to clarify timescales of drought and prevent confusion with related terms such as water scarcity and over-exploitation. Additionally, our understanding and analysis of drought needs to move from single driver to multiple drivers and from unidirectional to multidirectional. We identify research gaps and propose analysis approaches on, one, drivers, two, modifiers, three, impacts. This article was authored by AF Van Loon, K Stahl, G D Balthasari, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.