Development of Drought Risk Assessment Index for Local Comparisons

Abstract

<p>Numerous drought indices assess only hazard; however, very few indices take account into potential vulnerability and risk. Even though drought is one of the natural disasters that affect the socio-economic sphere, these indices do not reflect social capabilities. As an alternative, we proposed Drought Risk Index (DRI) developed by combining frameworks from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) and World Risk Index(WRI). DRI consists of three components such as Hazard, Exposure, Capacity. Hazard represents the reason factor causing damage and computed mainly by climate characteristics (e.g. monthly precipitation) while Exposure considers the objects exposed to disaster and calculates by the amount of the water demand (agricultural, industrial, and municipal sectors). In the case of Capacity, it indicates the ability of society to prepare or handle disasters and subdivides into adaptive and coping capacities; the adaptive capacity is calculated by institutional & financial abilities, and coping capacity by water resource facilities and response abilities. The proposed framework for DRI was tested under the specific focus on the local scale comparison of drought risk as a disaster at the Korean Peninsula. We aim at providing the basic tools for national drought management policies and plans.</p>