Assessment of Resilience to Drought of Rural Communities in Iran

AbstractIn recent years, drought has inflicted significant damage on agriculture and rural communities in Iran. Resilience is the capability of communities to handle and tolerate exterior pressures such as drought. The purpose of this study was to identify the indicators affecting social resilience against drought, determining the cause of reduction or increase of resilience in different regions. It also focuses on strategies for increasing resilience of rural communities through the provision of social services in Iran. The required information was collected using a questionnaire from five villages, including 237 villagers who were selected through snowball method. Shannon’s entropy and COPRAS methods were employed to determine and classify the drought resilience. The results show that some indicators like modified irrigation methods and new methods of coping with drought have devoted the highest weight. Also, there is a significant relationship between resilience rating of villages with average age of t...