Abstract: Assessment of basin water resources vulnerability reflects the water security conditions of the research area in an objective way by quantifying the degree of water resources vulnerability. According to the manifestation and causes of water resources' vulnerability, we built an evaluation indices system which consists of four primary indicators including water yield, water quality, flood disaster and drought and three secondary indicators of natural factor, human factor and carrying factor. On this basis, we constructed an assessment model for water resource vulnerability by using the entropy weight method in association with the linear weighting method. In this research we took Huaihe River basin as an example and assessed the water resources vulnerability of four provinces in 2003-2012 from two dimensions of time and space. The results showed that in terms of the time dimension, the value of water resources vulnerability in Huaihe River basin decreased in the decade, indicating that the vulnerability of water resources in the four provinces was improving; while in terms of the space dimension, water resources in Huaihe River basin was becoming more and more fragile from the west to the east. Research shows that the water resources vulnerability in Huaihe River basin presents a trend of improvement, but there are still some problems that need further management and regulation.

Key words: basin water resources, vulnerability assessment, linear weighting method, entropy weight method, Huaihe River basin