Assessment of Drought vulnerability through an integrated approach using AHP and Geoinformatics in the Kangsabati River Basin

Abstract

This study focuses on the application of multi-sensor satellite archived data products and ancillary data for the evaluation of drought vulnerability. The use of a subjective model, namely Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) integrated with Geographical Information System (GIS) and various influencing parameters, emerged as a powerful tool for the gauged and ungauged watershed. The Kangsabati river basin, located in the southern part of West Bengal (India), is facing issues of overexploitation of groundwater, climate variation, and unsystematic agricultural practices that are inducing the water crisis and vulnerability of the basin to drought conditions. In this study, 11 parameters, namely elevation, slope, aspect, LULC, population density, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference drought index (NDDI), land surface temperature (LST), normalized difference water index (NDWI), vegetation condition index (VCI), and soil moisture index (SMI) were used to delineate the drought in the catchment of Kangsabati River. Findings of this study using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) integrated with a GIS platform, show that, nearly 28.5% of the area falls under the medium drought category, followed by the high (21.1%), no drought (20%), low (19.5%), and very high (10.6%) drought categories in the study area. The study also suggests Nature Based Solution (NBS) in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies such as ecosystem-based approaches (EBA) and blue infrastructure for Drought Risk Reduction for drought mitigation in the study area.