Future Risk Projection of Compound Drought-Wildfire Disaster Under SSP Climate Change Scnerios

Compound drought-wildfire event is increasing trend in its frequency and severity worldwide, driven by the interaction between drought and wildfire, as seen in the 2017 California wildfires and 2019-20 Australian wildfires. However, there is still the lack of a methodology to quantitatively estimate the risk of compound drought-wildfire disaster. Therefore, this study presents a methodology to estimate the risk of compound drought-wildfire disaster using a Drought scenario based Fire Weather Index (DFWI) and projects the future risk of compound drought-wildfire disaster based on Social Shared Pathway (SSP) climate change scenarios. Gyeongsangbuk-do province was selected as the study area which is a wildfire prone area. We estimated the risk of compound drought-wildfire disaster and found that it is about 2.9 times greater than the risk of a single wildfire disaster. Based on the SSP climate change scenarios, the projected risk of compound drought-wildfire disasters was 1.01 to 1.70 times greater than current levels. Monthly risk assessment indicated the risks from July to October would increase. The study presented a new methodology for quantitative risk analysis and the future projections of the compound disasters. From the analysis, we have known that the measures or new design criteria considering the compound disasters should be required utilized for disaster prevention and for reducing the risk. The results of this study are expected to be used as the controversial issue for the development of new design criteria or measures for the prevention of the compound disaster.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. 2022R1A2C2091773).