Hydrological drought vulnerability assessment in Ethiopia using multi-criteria decision-making

Abstract

Drought significantly impacts the livelihoods of communities over extensive regions, with Ethiopia being particularly prone to frequent and persistent occurrences. Hydrological drought analysis necessitates spatially distributed data, a challenge faced in Ethiopian studies. We employed remote sensing and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to assign weightage values to nine hydrological drought-influencing factors, namely land use and land cover, soil texture, population density, elevation, drainage density, aridity index, slope, rainfall departure, and water storage deficit index. Our results identify spatial diversity of hydrological drought vulnerability, with six categories of extreme and very high vulnerability areas covering over 22% of the country from January to June, primarily in the northeast and southeast lowlands. The majority of the country falls within high and medium vulnerability areas, emphasizing the prevalence of hydrological drought, particularly from June to October, while some southwest regions experience low vulnerability. Overall, a substantial portion of the country is susceptible to severe hydrological drought throughout most months.