Abstract: Aeolian disaster is one of the meteorological disasters, which has characteristics of large affecting area, high seasonality and serious disaster lose. Aeolian disaster is an ecological disaster for north desert region and even to the southeast coast regions of China, and seriously affects local people living environment and socioeconomic development. In recent years, in order to assess the impact of aeolian disaster on China's socio-economic development, the researchers had done some studies on the aeolian disaster, however, there is little research on regional aeolian disaster risk assessment and had not built a systematic aeolian disaster risk assessment system. In order to comprehensively understand the current situation of aeolian disaster risk assessment, the published literatures in nearly 30 years had been used as a reference. The aeolian disaster risk assessment theoretical connotation, the assessment indexes and the methods had been analyzed. The results showed that the theories and models of aeolian disaster risk assessment were not perfect, the selection of the pregnant environment factors was not accurate and complex, the risk assessment methods were simple, and so on. Therefore, to improve aeolian disaster risk assessment, the new theories and methods of other natural disaster assessment must be introduced to aeolian disaster risk assessment in future, meanwhile, the aeolian physics, aeolian geomorphology, aeolian pretention and desertification remote sensing methods must be considered.

Key words: aeolian disaster, risk assessment, index, classification