• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.56 no.10
• /
• pp.619-629
• /
• 2023

Recent intensification of climate change has led to an increase in damages caused by droughts. Currently, in Korea, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) is used as a criterion to classify the intensity of droughts. Based on the accumulated precipitation over the past six months (SPI-6), meteorological drought intensities are classified into four categories: concern, caution, alert, and severe. However, there is a limitation in classifying drought intensity solely based on precipitation. To overcome the limitations of the meteorological drought warning criteria based on SPI, this study collected emergency water supply damage data from the National Drought Information Portal (NDIP) to classify drought intensity. Factors of SPI, such as precipitation, and factors used to calculate evapotranspiration, such as temperature and humidity, were indexed using min-max normalization. Coefficients for each factor were determined based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA). The drought intensity based on emergency water supply was used as the dependent variable, and the coefficients of each meteorological factor determined by GA were used as coefficients to derive a new Drought Severity Classification Index (DSCI). After deriving the DSCI, cumulative distribution functions were used to present intensity stage classification boundaries. It is anticipated that using the proposed DSCI in this study will allow for more accurate drought intensity classification than the traditional SPI, supporting decision-making for disaster management personnel.