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

Highlights: • Evaluated agricultural drought risk for Northern New South Wales, Australia. • The model considered all risk components and 16 relevant criteria. • Geospatial techniques were used to prepare the drought risk model. • Risk model identified the spatial extents and levels of agricultural drought risk. 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.