SULTAN: An application for landslide susceptibility assessment and site mapping: Using the principle of Factor of Safety (FS), developed for non-experts

Abstract

The Philippines is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world and landslides are one of the many hazards that devastates the country. The country's population and average amount of rainfall increases annually, causing the risk of landslides to increase as well. Because of this, there is a need to develop new techniques and models to measure landslide susceptibility to help mitigate the problem. Although there are already existing techniques available, most of these are very costly and requires the presence of an expert. Since the Philippines have very limited financial capabilities, maximizing the use of available resources and developing new techniques through innovation could be the right approach to mitigate the effects of natural hazards such as landslides. To address this concern, the grouped developed an application for landslide susceptibility assessment and site mapping using the model developed by Dr. Peckley and Dr. Bagtang for the use of both experts and non-experts alike. The application calculates for the Factor of Safety(FS) of sites using the following factors: material strength of soil, slope angle, vegetation cover, amount of rainfall, frequency of failure (land movement) and land use. Data collected by the application can be sent to the web application for site mapping. The application was developed using Android Studio while the web application was developed using Django Framework. Geologists from DOST Project NOAH tested the application for functionality validation. To evaluate the usability of the application, a survey was conducted to geology and civil engineering students. The group used QUIS (Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction) as the survey instrument that measures the following user interface factors: screen, terminologies, learnability and system capabilities.