Analysis of Drought Vulnerability Indices of Indian Districts using Fuzzy Logic Approach

India is an agrarian country and its agriculture is exposed to various hydro-ecological vulnerabilities, particularly successive occurrence of drought. Different studies have been carried out to measure this vulnerability in regional as well as national level based on various environmental parameters and derived indices like susceptibility, sensitivity, standardize precipitation and moisture index, etc. These indices are denoted by crisp values and generally represented by rank, level, range or category. This paper analyses the crisp index of drought vulnerability using a membership function of fuzzy set along with other geospatial parameter to depict probable consequences of drought vulnerability. The district level data of various indices have been compiled to depict the distribution of vulnerable districts across the country and linked with spatial database (district boundary) using geographical information system (GIS) software. More than 150 districts are found to be drought vulnerable and are classified (into four classes) according to the degree of membership. The distribution of these districts across the country has been depicted. Though the fuzzy logic approach is not used for highly quantitative empirical data to develop a knowledge base system, rather it is used for ambiguous and qualitative expression of data analysis. The present paper is an attempt to combine both the quantitative and qualitative expression through a fuzzy set to map the probable drought vulnerable districts across the country for region specific plan, particularly in agriculture sector.