Assessment of social vulnerability of landslides in the Darjeeling district using MCDA-based GIS techniques

Abstract

The consequences or the result of any disaster or hazard's impact on society or nature is considered a vulnerability. In terms of landslide hazards, it causes many losses to the community such as the death of people, damage to property and damage to nature. Social vulnerability is measured with different scales depending on the area of the occurrence. In this study, a social vulnerability was conducted to identify the socially vulnerable zones such as people and property. The study was conducted in the Darjeeling district, West Bengal (26027” N to 27013” N latitudes and 87059” E to 88053” E longitudes). The main objective of this study is to find out the area under vulnerable zones. With the help of the GIS platform and Data available from the DDMA handbook and Census 2011, the social vulnerable map was created. In this study, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)17 was applied to determine the weighted values of each factor i.e. Population Distribution, Literacy Rate, Non-working population etc. All the parameters were put into Arc GIS based on each parameter’s weighted values and the final output of social vulnerability was prepared. The result showed that 26% area comes under high vulnerable zones and 4% are in very high vulnerable zones. The southern part of the district comes under high to very high vulnerable zones due to the high population density and high settlement density.