Evaluation of economical vulnerability to climatic fluctuations (Case study: Khorasan Razavi province)

Climatic changes have severe effects on water and soil sources in any given region. To study the resulting fluctuations of climatic factors in different regions for possible adaptation policies to new climate events is of great importance. A possible approach to study the damage on economic activities caused by climatic fluctuations is to calculate vulnerability index. To achieve this goal, Vulnerability Index (VI) in the period of 1994- 2014 has been calculated for 11 regions of Khorasan Razavi province. The components of climatic fluctuations vulnerability index included two types of shocks (permanent shocks and recurrent shocks). The shocks included temperature fluctuations, precipitation, floods and increasing aridity. The results of the index suggest that in Khorasan Razavi province in the period of study, Torbat heydarieh had the highest and Chenaran had the lowest economic damage from climate change. The average index of vulnerability to fluctuations in the climate Khorasan Razavi province is 47.04 (above- average vulnerability of the developing countries). It is suggested that different agencies for planning and allocating funds for negative impacts of changing climatic factors may find these indices results quite useful and beneficial for further studies.