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Table 1: Vulnerability Component Scoring System <br />Ranking Scale <br />Score <br />Exposure <br />Extreme <br />5 <br />High <br />4 <br />Moderate <br />3 <br />Low <br />2 <br />Very low <br />1 <br />Sensitivity <br />Extreme <br />5 <br />High <br />4 <br />Moderate <br />3 <br />Low <br />2 <br />Very low <br />1 <br />Adaptive Capacity <br />Extreme <br />5 <br />High <br />4 <br />Moderate <br />3 <br />Low <br />2 <br />Very low <br />A key goal of our assessment is to develop and demonstrate GIS -based approaches to <br />drought vulnerability assessment. GIS clearly offers opportunity to manipulate and add <br />value to existing drought related hazard information, as well as data regarding assets at <br />risk. It also offers opportunities to conduct environmental modeling to assess the spatial <br />impacts of the drought hazard and elements at risk, and the spatial variability and <br />structure of vulnerability. In doing so it allows for assessment of potential adaptive <br />capacities by viewing and analyzing the various elements of drought vulnerability <br />together with related spatial data, including water supply and other infrastructure, <br />census data, land use, and so on. With a map of drought vulnerability, decision makers <br />can visualize the hazard and more effectively communicate the concept of vulnerability <br />to agricultural producers, natural resource managers, and others. <br />For this project GIS -based analysis will necessarily be constrained to those sectors with <br />sufficient spatial data to support this, or where data can be developed in an efficient <br />manner by manipulating existing spatial information. In developing GIS -based <br />assessments, we will test and showcase for the state an existing drought vulnerability <br />methodology (Wilhelmi and Wilhite 2002) that will ultimately be adapted to encompass <br />several sectors across the entire state. <br />AMEC will use qualitative, quantitative, and GIS -based assessments of vulnerability to <br />portray how drought vulnerability varies across the state for the state assets and critical <br />sectors described previously. In most cases we anticipate assessment of each <br />asset/sector will depend upon a combination of both qualitative and quantitative <br />analysis. Where spatial data facilitates this we will aggregate drought assessment <br />results and portray these in GIS to enable depiction of drought vulnerability patterns <br />(moderate, severe etc.). For example, the mountain counties will likely be most <br />