Abstract:

Villages in mountainous areas are under the risk of topography, geomorphology and frequent natural disasters in a long term. Rural transportation system is characterized by low network degree and weak capacity to resist disasters, and the problem of vulnerability of traffic environment is prominent. Taking Luonan county in the Qinling-Daba mountainous areas as an example and based on exposure, sensitivity and response capacity of human-environment system vulnerability, this paper constructed a basic framework of rural transportation environment vulnerability, which contained the key elements of risk events, geographical features, key travel path, road network structures, public and private vehicles, family capital etc., and established a targeted evaluation index system. With the aid of ArcGIS and GeoDa, this research examined the spatial structure and spatial autocorrelation of the transportation environment vulnerability in Luonan county at the village level. It also utilized a geographical weighted regression model to explore the factors of natural conditions, population, socio-economic development, which had influence on response capacity of traffic risk and its spatial difference. The results showed that the vulnerability of transportation environment took the county seat and the suburbs as the center increasing outward, which presents a circle structure featured by great difference in vertical direction. Simultaneously, the vulnerability of the transportation environment in village-level residential areas showed a significant positive spatial autocorrelation, but both exposure degree and sensitivity showed a significant spatial negative correlation with the response capacity. There were three patterns of local spatial correlation in transportation environment vulnerability: the vulnerability of the local "hot spots" areas was widely observed in the north- central mountainous area and fell into the dilemma of high exposure, high sensitivity and low response capacity, while the "cold spots" villages were founded in suburbs or areas adjacent to the towns with higher income, which had low sensitivity and high response capacity. There were a few "heterogeneity points", and these villages were adjacent to low-vulnerable villages, but they belonged to high-vulnerable areas. Moreover, topographical condition, industrial distribution, population structure, education level and family size had a significant impact on response capacity of transportation risk. In addition, the effect direction and intensity of the influencing factors had significant spatial differences.

Key words: transportation environment vulnerability, response capacity of risk, spatial autocorrelation, geographical weighted regression, Qinling-Daba mountainous areas