Risk Assessment of Drought Hazards based on Water Resource Vulnerability under Climate Change – A case study in Guangdong province, South China

Abstract:

The extreme climatic events are becoming more and more frequent and intensive owing to climate change. Droughts have caused a variety of problems and threats, such as water shortage, salinity intrusion, water quality deterioration, and etc., which can seriously hamper the rapid socio-economic development. The proposed study aims to develop a joint system of assessing the risk of drought hazards from physical dimension to the socioeconomic dimension. For the former dimension, the research will focus on characterizing the changing properties of droughts in both time and space. For the latter dimension, the water resource vulnerability will be assessed based on the typical regional water demanding and supply indicators. The combination research will enable us to not only advance the state-of-the-art of drought research, but also produce many results and findings for sustainable management and adaptation of water resources resilient to the changing climate and socioeconomic development in the Guangdong province.