The Proxy Variables Selection of Vulnerability Assessment for Agricultural Infrastructure According to Climate Change

논문 - 기후변화에 따른 농업생산기반 재해 취약성 평가를 위한 대리변수 선정

Climate change has impacts on not only the average temperature rise but also the intensity and frequency of extreme events such as flood and drought. It is also expected that the damages on agricultural infrastructure will be increased resulting from increased rainfall intensity and frequency caused by climate change. To strengthen the climate change adaptation capacity, it is necessary to identify the vulnerability of a given society's physical infrastructures and to develop appropriate adaptation strategies with infrastructure management because generally facilities related to human settlements are vulnerable to climate changes and establishing an adaptive public infrastructure would reduce the damages and the repair cost. Therefore, development of mitigation strategies for agricultural infrastructure against climatic hazard is very important, but there are few studies on agricultural infrastructure vulnerability assessment and adaptation strategies. The concept of vulnerability, however, is difficult to functionally define due to the fact that vulnerability itself includes many aspects (biological, socioeconomic, etc.) in various sectors. As such, much research on vulnerability has used indicators which are useful for standardization and aggregation. In this study, for the vulnerability assessment for agricultural infrastructure, 3 categories of climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptation capacity were defined which are composed of 16 sub-categories and 49 proxy variables. Database for each proxy variables was established based on local administrative province. Future studies are required to define the weighting factor and standardization method to calculate the vulnerability indicator for agricultural infrastructure against climate change.