Risk Assessment of Agricultural Drought Based on Catastrophe Progression Method : A China Case Study

Agricultural drought is a complex type of drought disaster, involving factors such as soil, crops, atmosphere, and human resource utilization. The identification of regions’ agricultural drought risk and factors affecting agricultural drought risk level are significant for disaster prevention and mitigation. To assess agricultural drought risk, this paper firstly established an evaluation index system for agricultural drought risk that contained four subsystems- hazard, exposure, vulnerability and resilience. Furthermore, an assessment model of agricultural drought risk in China was constructed based on catastrophe progression method. Entropy method and analytic hierarchy process were adopted to optimize the proposed model. Finally, an improved catastrophe progression method was developed and applied to assess the China’s agricultural drought risk in the last two decades. And moreover the factors mainly affecting regional risk level are diagnosed. The application of our model for risk assessment of China’s agricultural drought indicates that the integrated risk value of 31 provinces in China average 0.8245 and 14 provinces’ risk are higher than it, accounting for 45.16%; in particular, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Henan are the highest risk regions. It was also confirmed that indicators most sensitive with agricultural drought risk level are both closely relative with regions’ irrigation capacity. These findings help policymakers take accurate and effective measures for agricultural drought prevention and mitigation