Agricultural drought risk assessment of Northern New South Wales, Australia using geospatial techniques

Muhammad Al-Amin Hoque; Biswajeet Pradhan; Naser Ahmed; Md Shawkat Islam Sohel

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143600

Agricultural drought risk assessment of Northern New South Wales, Australia using geospatial techniques

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Feb 20:756:143600. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143600. Epub 2020 Nov 17.

Authors

Muhammad Al-Amin Hoque¹, Biswajeet Pradhan², Naser Ahmed³, Md Shawkat Islam Sohel⁴

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Advanced Modelling and Geospatial Information Systems (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia; Department of Geography and Environment, Jagannath University, Dhaka 1100, Bangladesh. Electronic address: MuhammadAl-Amin.Hoque@uts.edu.au.
² Centre for Advanced Modelling and Geospatial Information Systems (CAMGIS), Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia; Department of Energy and Mineral Resources Engineering, Sejong University, Choongmu-gwan, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 05006, Republic of Korea; Center of Excellence for Climate Change Research, King Abdulaziz University, P. O. Box 80234, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia; Earth Observation Center, Institute of Climate Change, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia. Electronic address: Biswajeet.Pradhan@uts.edu.au.
³ Department of Geography and Environment, Jagannath University, Dhaka 1100, Bangladesh.
⁴ Department of Environmental Science and Management, North South University, Dhaka 1229, Bangladesh. Electronic address: shawkat.sohel@northsouth.edu.

PMID: 33248778
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143600

Abstract

Droughts are recurring events in Australia and cause a severe effect on agricultural and water resources. However, the studies about agricultural drought risk mapping are very limited in Australia. Therefore, a comprehensive agricultural drought risk assessment approach that incorporates all the risk components with their influencing criteria is essential to generate detailed drought risk information for operational drought management. A comprehensive agricultural drought risk assessment approach was prepared in this work incorporating all components of risk (hazard, vulnerability, exposure, and mitigation capacity) with their relevant criteria using geospatial techniques. The prepared approach is then applied to identify the spatial pattern of agricultural drought risk for Northern New South Wales region of Australia. A total of 16 relevant criteria under each risk component were considered, and fuzzy logic aided geospatial techniques were used to prepare vulnerability, exposure, hazard, and mitigation capacity indices. These indices were then incorporated to quantify agricultural drought risk comprehensively in the study area. The outputs depicted that about 19.2% and 41.7% areas are under very-high and moderate to high risk to agricultural droughts, respectively. The efficiency of the results is successfully evaluated using a drought inventory map. The generated spatial drought risk information produced by this study can assist relevant authorities in formulating proactive agricultural drought mitigation strategies.

Keywords: Agricultural drought; Fuzzy logic, Australia; GIS; Remote sensing; Risk assessment.