Abstract: According to previous studies, among all possible measures to avoid and alleviate natural disaster, it is the simplest and most effective method to improve the natural disaster management level to the risk management level through risk zonation on the basis of the scientific research. The spatial information technology was used for risk assessment on historical hail disaster of Weifang in the study, in order to provide scientific basis on disaster prevention and reduction. Based on the AHP, weighted summation evaluation and range standard normalization methods, the paper built the assessment model of hail disaster in Weifang using the nine weather stations data of month by month hail hazard from 1971 to 2000. By indexes integration of the dangers of hazard factors, the vulnerability of hazardaffected body and disaster prevention and mitigation capacity using ArcGIS9.3, hail disaster risk zonation of Weifang was obtained. The results showed that, annual average number of hail days increase with the elevation increases. The highest risk regions mainly distribute in the northwest part of city, attributed to its high incidence and weak capacity for disaster reduction. More than half of the city has a higher risk level and the lowest risk regions are located in the centre, which are basically tallies with the history experimental data of hail disaster.

Key words: Hail disaster, Risk zonation, GIS, AHP, Weifang