The purpose of this study was to evaluate vulnerability of drought in small island areas. Vulnerability assessment factors of drought were selected by applying the factor analysis. Ninety Eup/Myon areas in small island were evaluated to vulnerability of drought by entropy method adapting objective weights. Vulnerability consisted of climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. A total of 22 indicators were used to evaluate and analyze vulnerability of drought in small island areas. The results of entropy method showed that winter rainfall, no rainfall days, agricultural population rate, cultivation area rate, water supply rate and groundwater capacity have a significant impact on drought assessment. The overall assessment of vulnerability indicated that Seodo-myeon Ganghwa-gun, Seolcheon-myeon Namhae-gun and Samsan-myeon Ganghwa-gun were the most vulnerable to drought. Especially Ganghwa-gun should be considered policy priority to establish drought measures in the future, because it has a high vulnerability of drought.

The objectives of this study were to develop an evaluation method of regional vulnerability to agricultural drought and to classify the vulnerability patterns. In order to test the method, 24 city or county areas of Gyeonggi-do were chose. First, statistic data and digital maps referred for agricultural drought were defined, and the input data of 31 items were set up from 5 categories: land use factor, water resource factor, climate factor, topographic and soil factor, and agricultural production foundation factor. Second, for simplification of the factors, principal component analysis was carried out, and eventually 4 principal components which explain about 80.8% of total variance were extracted. Each of the principal components was explained into the vulnerability components of scale factor, geographical factor, weather factor and agricultural production foundation factor. Next, DVIP (Drought Vulnerability Index for Paddy), was calculated using factor scores from principal components. Last, by means of statistical cluster analysis on the DVIP, the study area was classified as 5 patterns from A to E. The cluster A corresponds to the area where the agricultural industry is insignificant and the agricultural foundation is little equipped, and the cluster B includes typical agricultural areas where the cultivation areas are large but irrigation facilities are still insufficient. As for the cluster C, the corresponding areas are vulnerable to the climate change, and the D cluster applies to the area with extensive forests and high elevation farmlands. The last cluster I indicates the areas where the farmlands are small but most of them are irrigated as much.