Resilience Classification Research of Water Resources System in a Changing Environment

Abstract

Resilience is defined as the ability of system returning to its original condition after certain disturbance. The Water Resources System's Resilience (WRSR) is affected by the internal elements within the system and outside stresses influence. This concept is proposed on the base of previous research on resilience research of other fields. A resilience index assessment system is established based on analysis of inter and outer influencing factors of WRSR. The mean squared deviation method is adopted to calculate different index weight. A fuzzy clustering method is used to evaluate the classification of WRSR. The example operates evaluation classification towards eleven districts of Shanxi province in 1994, 1999, and 2004 in a changing environment. The WRSK of Shanxi province is divided into three grades. The three grades are strong resilience area, common resilience area and feeble resilience area respectively. The results demonstrate that the WRSR in Shanxi province is generally low. 72.7% of the area belongs to feeble area of WRSR. 18.2% of Shanxi province belong to common area and strong area in 2004 respectively. Besides, WRSR spatially decreases from east to west and from south to north, while temporally descending in most area. At the same time the resilience change values of water resources system in a changing environment show that the resilience of water resource appear descending trend year by year in Shanxi province. Eight districts of eleven districts appear descending trend year by year, occupying 72.73% of all districts in Shanxi province. The strong areas decrease from five districts in 1994 year to one district in 2004 year. The feeble areas increase from one district in 1994 year to eight districts in 2004 year. The conclusions agree with the distribution of annual precipitation in Shanxi province.