Quantitative Assessment of Water Resources Vulnerability in Zhangjiakou region of Guanting Reservoir Basin, North China

The water resources vulnerability (WRV) is defined as the characteristics that water resources system easily suffers damage from natural factors or human activities, and it is difficult to recover to its former status once this damage happens. The quantitative assessment of the WRV is important for the scientific decision-making for the sustainable water resources exploitation and utilization. In this paper, an index system, including four subsystems of hydro logical subsystem, socio-economic subsystem, eco-environment subsystem and hydraulic engineering subsystem is constructed for the integrated WRV assessment of Zhangjiakou region of Guanting reservoir basin, north China. The index system is of multi-layer and multi-objective characteristics. It gives consideration to both surface water and the groundwater, water quantity and water quality. A quantitative method, which combines the parameter system method with the background value method, is used for the WRV assessment of each subsystem and the integrated water resources system. The calculated results show that the integrated WRV of Zhangjiakou region is quite serious with most of the studied areas belonging to extreme vulnerability. The assessment method has the simple principle, and can give rational assessment results through the simple calculation. Therefore it can be well used for the regional WRV assessment.