Determining land vulnerability to drought using multi-criteria decision-making assessment and analytical hierarchy algorithm

The research is aimed at assessing drought impact, focusing on its gradual and long-term development and significant influencing the agriculture. Its appearing depends on various factors, including climatic conditions such as precipitation and temperature, as well as economic ones, such as population density and the state of irrigated land per capita. The authors emphasize the importance of using geographic information systems (GIS) at assessing drought vulnerability in conjunction with the analytical hierarchical process (AHP). Application of GIS enables spatial analysis of drought in the Dak Lak province, Vietnam. Eight key parameters were considered in the study, including climatic, geographic, and socio-economic characteristics such as annual and monthly precipitation, land use / land cover (LULC), terrain slope, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the same of the water (NDWI), the indicator of topographic wetness, and population density. The analytic hierarchical process (AHP) method is used to calculate the weight coefficients of each criterion based on pairwise comparisons. Analysis of the parameters’ thematic maps allows for making a drought vulnerability map. The research results indicate that 23 % of the Dak Lak province`s territory is prone to moderate drought. The map created on the topic provides extensive information on the severity of dry spell in the region, particularly in the context of agriculture. The results of this study may contribute to development of methods to minimize the adverse effects of drought, thereby potentially increasing crop yields and improving the quality of life for the population