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Subject Area

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Article Type

Original Study

Abstract

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) faced significant drought challenges due to global and environmental changes, necessitating drought assessments. Advanced techniques of remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were combined in this research to perform drought vulnerability zonation for KRI. Average annual rainfall, Average number of rainy days, Average annual temperature, slope, elevation, normalised difference water index (NDWI), normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), land surface temperature (LST), and temperature condition index (TCI) were selected as contributing parameters for drought vulnerability assessments. The considered parameters were weighted using pairwise comparison, and thematic maps were created to generate a drought vulnerability zonation map for KRI. The results were categorised into five drought vulnerability levels: very low, low, medium, high, and very high. The findings showed that 9050.25 km² (19.7%) of the area and 12 (15.6%) zones of KRI were identified as regions with very high vulnerability to drought, suggesting a critical need for targeted mitigation strategies. This study notably aids sustainable environmental management and provides important information to help policymakers implement regional drought mitigation measures.

Keywords

Drought vulnerability Zonation, Remote Sensing Drought, Geographic Information System, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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