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Assessment of drought hazard, vulnerability and risk in Iran using GIS techniques

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Abstract

The drought has enormous adverse effects on agriculture, water resources and environment, and causes damages around the world. Drought risk assessment and prioritization of drought management can help decision makers and planners to manage the adverse effects of drought. This paper aims to determine the risk of drought in Iran. At the first stage, standardized precipitation index (SPI) was calculated for the period 1981–2016. Then the probability map of different drought classes or drought hazard probability map were prepared. After that the indicator-based vulnerability assessment method was used to determine the drought vulnerability index. Five indices including climate, topography, waterway density, land use and groundwater resources were chosen as the most critical factors of drought in Iran and followed by the analytical hierarchy process questionnaire, the weights of each index were obtained based on expert opinions. Fuzzy membership maps of each index and sub-index were prepared using ArcGIS software. The drought vulnerability map of Iran was plotted using these weights and maps of each indicator. Finally, the drought risk map of Iran was provided by multiplying drought hazard and vulnerability maps. According to the 43-completed questionnaires by experts, climate index has the highest vulnerability to drought. Climate does not have an important role in drought hazard index, but it is the most crucial factor to classified drought vulnerability index. The results showed that central, northeast, southeast and west parts of Iran are at high risks of drought. There are regions with different risks in Iran due to unusual weather and climatic conditions. We realized that the climate and the groundwater situation is almost the same in the central, east and south parts of Iran, because the land use plays a crucial role in the drought vulnerability and risk in these areas. The drought risk decreases from the center of Iran to the southwest and northwest.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Arid and Mountainous Regions Reclamation, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Tehran, 31587-77871, Iran

    Esmail Heydari Alamdarloo, Hassan Khosravi & Sahar Nasabpour

  2. Department of Organic & Polymer Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry, Kharazmi University, Tehran, 15719-14911, Iran

    Ahmad Gholami

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  1. Esmail Heydari Alamdarloo
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  2. Hassan Khosravi
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  3. Sahar Nasabpour
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  4. Ahmad Gholami
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Correspondence to Hassan Khosravi.

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Heydari Alamdarloo, E., Khosravi, H., Nasabpour, S. et al. Assessment of drought hazard, vulnerability and risk in Iran using GIS techniques. J. Arid Land 12, 984–1000 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40333-020-0096-4

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