Analysis and assessment of the risk of snow and freezing disaster in China

Snow and freezing disaster is one of the most serious and widespread influenced hazards, which not only threatens human life and property, but also brings great damages to economy, society, resources, and environment. Risk assessment to snow and freezing disaster at national level can provide a guide and improve the risk reduction awareness of the management. The specific objectives of this study were to explore the following questions: (1) Investigation of the long-term occurrences of snow and freezing in China; (2) Spatial analysis for examining losses in different hazard affected bodies including livelihood, economic and agriculture; (3) Propose an index for estimation of agricultural risk and provide risk map for disaster management. The results show that the regions with high snow and freezing occurrences are located in northwestern China, which is not consistent with the high losses areas in the coastal and southeastern parts. This indicates that the high losses regions shift from the northwestern part to the southeastern areas with accelerated urbanization, rapid economic development, increasing population and facility cultivation. The snow and freezing risk patterns show relatively stable characteristics with a zonal differentiation due to stepped topography, different climate and exposure of hazard affected bodies. We conclude that in particular climate zone, the exposure and vulnerability of hazard-affected bodies can magnify or reduce the risk of present and future disaster and can ultimately affects the distribution and extent of disaster losses.