ABSTRACT
Drought, a natural disaster, harms agricultural production and, consequently, negatively affects the economy, society, and the environment. Vulnerability to drought differs from region to region since it depends on various factors. As some regions will probably become more affected by the changes in temperature, precipitation, soil structure, slope and lack of groundwater, etc., assessment of different regions with respect to drought vulnerability is crucial for prioritization and, consequently, for taking suitable prevention or mitigation actions. Since there are several factors affecting the drought vulnerability of a region, this problem is suitable for the utilization of multi-criteria decision-making methods. Moreover, as the assessment process includes uncertainty, the integration of fuzzy logic into the solution procedure is appropriate to deal with the impreciseness. Therefore, in this study, the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy weighted aggregated sum product assessment methods were utilized to assess cities in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey with respect to drought vulnerability. As a result of this analysis, the most critical criteria affecting drought vulnerability were found to be annual rainfall and average temperature, and the most vulnerable city was identified as Konya, followed by Ankara and Niğde.
