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Arid Land Geography ›› 2025, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (8): 1421-1431.doi: 10.12118/j.issn.1000-6060.2024.628

• Ecology and Disasters • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Comprehensive assessment and regionalization of social vulnerability for natural disasters in Gansu Province

YU Han1,2(), MENG Zhihua3, WANG Jing’ai2   

  1. 1. School of Agriculture and Forestry Economics and Management, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou 730101, Gansu, China
    2. Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
    3. School of Accountancy, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou 730101, Gansu, China
  • Received:2024-10-17 Revised:2024-12-24 Online:2025-08-25 Published:2025-08-21

Abstract:

It is very important to reduce regional social vulnerability to natural disasters and integrated risk governance. At the county and district unit scale, a social vulnerability assessment index system was constructed for three disaster-bearing bodies that would be suitable for Gansu Province: Population, economy and agriculture. The social vulnerability of natural disasters in Gansu Province was evaluated, including exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability. Then, based on the paradigm of natural geographic regionalization, a comprehensive social vulnerability regionalization was developed. The results show the following: (1) The comprehensive social vulnerability index in Gansu Province is generally high in the east, low in the west, high in the south, and low in the north. High-vulnerability areas are mainly concentrated in the eastern, central, and southern regions of Gansu, and they cluster in densely populated disaster-prone areas, such as cities and nearby counties. (2) Comprehensive regionalization includes two levels: The first level is divided into four leading natural disaster types, including sandstorm-leading disaster areas in the western section of the Hexi Corridor, the Lanzhou drought-leading disaster area, the southern Gansu rainstorm flood landslide/debris flow-leading disaster area, the central-eastern Hexi Corridor, and east, central, and southern Gansu multihazard disaster areas. Secondary-level zones include 14 comprehensive vulnerability level zones with different structures. The regionalization scheme systematiclly expresses macrospatial differentiation in social vulnerability structures under regionally dominant natural disaster types that can serve diverse regional differences and help reduce social vulnerability to natural disasters.

Key words: social vulnerability, natural disaster, comprehensive regionalization, arid region, Gansu Province