Risk measurement of drought disaster during 2000-2009 in Huaihe River Basin, China

Drought disaster is one of the most important natural disasters in China. The drought disaster brings negative influences to both industry and agricultural production, which severely restricts the sustainable development of Chinese society and economy Therefore, drought risk management and risk assessment become important contents for the governments seeking effective measures to reduce drought disaster losses. In this paper; considering the influence factors of drought disasters with the characteristics of fuzziness and uncertainty the cloud model which can realize the mapping between qualitative concept and quantitative expression is proposed and used to assess the drought disaster risk. The comprehensive cloud generator and synthetic operation are adopted to calculate the membership of each drought indices, and the comprehensive risk grades can be obtained. The model is used to assess the drought risks of Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces in Huaihe River Basin from 2000 to 2009. The assessment results are consistent with the actual situations. The results show that the cloud model is effective and suitable for drought disaster risk assessment.