High Landslide Susceptibility Research Articles

CFTIlandslides, Italian database of historical earthquake-induced landslides

Knowing the location, the extent and the characteristics of any earthquake-induced environmental phenomenon is becoming an increasingly pressing need for civil protection agencies and local administrations. In particular, earthquake-triggered landslides are known for being among the most important sources of secondary hazard, as they may cause significant losses and may delay rescue operations across large areas. The combination of the relatively frequent seismic release with a very high landslide susceptibility makes the Italian territory especially prone to the occurrence of earthquake-induced landslides. The CFTIlandslides dataset features over 1,000 landslides triggered by historical Italian earthquakes (up to 1997). The landslides effects are subdivided into classes based on location accuracy and type of movement. Knowing the distribution of the past earthquake-induced landslides provides the input information for assessing the related hazard. This dataset is addressed to a large audience of potential users, including researchers and scholars, administrators and technicians belonging to local institutions, and civil protection authorities.

Landslide susceptibility and building exposure assessment using machine learning models and geospatial analysis techniques

Landslides are among the most dangerous hazards in Asia, posing a significant threat to human lives, infrastructure, and sustainable development. Landslide susceptibility maps provide useful insights into hazard potential but lack quantitative exposure assessments to develop targeted mitigation strategies and resource allocation. This study aims to propose an integrated approach for landslide hazards and exposure evaluation using machine learning models on the Google Earth Engine environment and geospatial analysis techniques. A geospatial database was established to predict hazards and evaluate exposure, including data on topography, geology, hydrology, climate features, land use, and building data. The landslide susceptibility map was created with advanced machine-learning algorithms, including Classification And Regression Tree (CART), Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting (GB), and Support Vector Machine (SVM). The ROC curve and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test were employed to evaluate the performance differences among the CART, GB, RF, and SVM models. The results indicated that the RF model demonstrated the highest performance, leading to its selection for creating a landslide susceptibility map. Landslide exposure was evaluated by overlaying the landslide susceptibility map with building data to quantify the number of affected houses by landslides across districts and communes. The analysis results identified the Cho Don district as the most exposed, with 46,237 households located in high and very high landslide susceptibility zones, followed by Ba Be district (39,631 households), Bac Kan city (37,266 households), Bach Thong district (28,495 households), Cho Moi district (28,436 households), Na Ri district (17,723 households), Ngan Son district (14,142 households), and Pac Nam district (13,034 households). These findings enable the identification of the potential consequences of landslides on infrastructure, human settlements, and livelihoods, contributing to the promotion of disaster reduction and prevention strategies.

Enhancing landslide susceptibility mapping using a positive-unlabeled machine learning approach: a case study in Chamoli, India

IntroductionThe Indian Himalayas' susceptibility to landslides, particularly as a location where climate change effects may be event catalysts, necessitates the development of dependable landslide susceptibility maps (LSM).MethodThis study diverges from traditional binary classification models, framing LSM as a positive-unlabeled learning problem. This approach acknowledges that regions without recorded landslides are not necessarily at low risk but could simply have not experienced landslides yet. The study utilizes novel positive-unlabeled learning-enhanced algorithms—Random Forest, K-Nearest Neighbor, and Decision Tree—to create LSM for Chamoli district, India. Eleven causative factors for landslides are identified, including elevation, aspect, slope, geology, geomorphology, distance to lineament, lithology, NDVI, distance to river, distance to road and residential land use. To address spatial correlation biases, instead of randomly splitting the dataset, the study adopts spatial splitting to get the training and testing datasets.ConclusionThe study reveals that positive-unlabeled learning substantially improves the Area Under Curve and recall, leading to a more conservative LSM compared to binary classification methods. Analysis shows that the southern region of Chamoli exhibits high recall but lower accuracy, suggesting a latent high landslide susceptibility despite a lack of historical landslides in this region. The study also quantifies the impact of human activity on landslide risk, indicating an elevated threat to life and the local economy, especially in Chamoli's southwestern areas.

Landslide susceptibility assessment in Addi Arkay, Ethiopia using GIS, remote sensing, and AHP

Landslides account for the breakdown of natural topographies, impacting many mountainous areas and leading to loss of lives and damaged infrastructure. This research aims to generate a reliable landslide susceptibility zonation map employing geospatial and Analytical Hierarchy Processes (AHP) in Addi Arkay Woreda, North Gondar Zone, Amhara Regional State, northern Ethiopia. The present study uses remote sensing data, geographic information system (GIS) tools, AHP, and weighted linear combination (WLC) models to analyze multiple environmental variables, including slope, aspect, curvature, lithology, soil texture, topographic wetness index (TWI), and rainfall. As per the results, around 186.12 km2 (13.26%) of the total study area is under very high landslide susceptibility and 140.85 km2 (10.05%) under very low susceptibility. Using Google Earth images for inaccessible areas, 121 landslide inventories were identified through fieldwork. Of these inventories, 85 were used to train the model and 36 for testing. The performance of the AHP model was validated by the Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve (0.75), which indicates good predictive accuracy for identifying landslide-prone areas. These findings are essential to regional land use planning, hazard mitigation, and landslide prevention efforts. Additionally, this study contributes to the scientific understanding of landslide dynamics in the Northwestern highlands of Ethiopia and offers a methodological framework that can be applied to other regions with similar geological and climatic conditions.

Landslide susceptibility mapping in East Ungaran, Indonesia: A comparative study using statistical methods

East Ungaran, is one of landslide prone areas in Semarang Regency, Indonesia. In addition to provide a more detail map of landslide susceptibility, the objective of this research was to compare performance of three widely used methods, which are the Weight of Evidence (WoE), Logistic Regression (LR) and combined Weight of Evidence (WoE) – Logistic Regression (LR), for landslide susceptibility mapping. Slope, elevation, lithology, land use, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), distance from lineament, distance from river, and distance from road were considered as landslide controlling parameters in the research area and were used as input variables in the landslide susceptibility zonation. The results showed that the slope, elevation, and distance from the road are significant parameters causing the landslides. The research area is divided into very low, low, moderate, and high landslide susceptibility zones. The WoE performs better than the LR, while the combined WoE-LR method performs the best among the three methods in predicting landslide susceptibility in this area. The landslide susceptibility map developed using the combined WoE-LR method is suggested to be used for landslide mitigation planning of this area.

A Strategy for Neighboring Pixel Collaboration in Landslide Susceptibility Prediction

Landslide susceptibility prediction usually involves the comprehensive analysis of terrain and other factors that may be distributed with spatial patterns. Without considering the spatial correlation and mutual influence between pixels, conventional prediction methods often focus only on information from individual pixels. To address this issue, the present study proposes a new strategy for neighboring pixel collaboration based on the Unified Perceptual Parsing Network (UPerNet), the Vision Transformer (ViT), and Vision Graph Neural Networks (ViG). This strategy efficiently utilizes the strengths of deep learning in feature extraction, sequence modeling, and graph data processing. By considering the information from neighboring pixels, this strategy can more accurately identify susceptible areas and reduce misidentification and omissions. The experimental results suggest that the proposed strategy can predict landslide susceptibility zoning more accurately. These predictions can identify flat areas such as rivers and distinguish between areas with high and very high landslide susceptibility. Such refined zoning outcomes are significant for landslide prevention and mitigation and can help decision-makers formulate targeted response measures.

Integration of geospatial analysis, frequency ratio, and analytical hierarchy process for landslide susceptibility assessment in the maze catchment, omo valley, southern Ethiopia

This investigation was conducted in southern Ethiopia's Maze watershed in the Omo River Valley. Frequency ratio (FR) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques were used to assess landslide susceptibility in the region. Identifying causative components and landslide inventory data achieved the goal. Remote sensing and on-site investigations found 793 landslide polygons. To assess vulnerability, the landslide inventory information is categorized into two groups: the training dataset (70%) and the validation dataset (30%). This study examined “slope, aspect, curvature, lithology, land use and cover, normalized vegetation index, and proximity to fault lines, rivers, and distance to road as landslide controlling factors”. The spatial analysis capabilities in Arc GIS were used to overlay the weights of all landslide-causing components to create the susceptibility map. A final landslide susceptibility map is produced using FR and AHP methods and categorized as “very low,” “low,” “moderate,” “high,” and “very high.” The frequency ratio method divides the region into susceptibility classes by frequency. The very low, low, medium, high, and very high susceptibility groups cover 25%, 20%, 18%, and 19% of the territory. The analytical hierarchical process technique shows that 3%, 7%, 26%, 36%, and 28% of the area are very low, low, medium, moderate, and very high landslide susceptibility. The receiver operating characteristic curve was employed to validate the area-underlayer susceptibility maps. The success rates were determined using the FR and AHP approaches, resulting in AUC numbers of 0.873 and 0.87. Similarly, the prediction rates were determined to be 0.81 and 0.80. The landslide susceptibility maps will significantly influence land resource allocation.

Assessing the relationship between landslide susceptibility and land cover change using machine learning

Landslides are natural disasters most frequent in the mountain region of Vietnam, producing critical damage to human lives and assets. Therefore, precisely identifying the landslide occurrence probability within the region is essential in supporting decision-makers or developers in establishing effective strategies for reducing the damage. This study is aimed at developing a methodology based on machine learning, namely Xgboost (XGB), lightGBM, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), and Bagging (BA) for assessing the connection of land cover change to landslide susceptibility in Da Lat City, Vietnam. 202 landslide locations and 13 potential drivers became input data for the model. Various statistical indices, namely the root mean square error (RMSE), the area under the curve (AUC), and mean absolute error (MAE), were used to evaluate the proposed models. Our findings indicate that the Xgboost model was better than other models, as shown by the AUC value of 0.94, followed by LightGBM (AUC=0.91), KNN (AUC=0.87), and Bagging (AUC=0.81). In addition, urban areas increased during 2017-2023 from 25 km² to 30 km² in very high landslide susceptibility areas. Our approach can be applied to test the other regions in Vietnam. Our findings might represent a necessary tool for land use planning strategies to reduce damage from natural disasters and landslides.

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TEMPORAL MODEL AND SPATIAL CORRELATION METHODS FOR PERSISTENT SCATTERER DETERMINATION IN LANDSLIDE PRONE AREAS

Abstract. The Philippines is no stranger to natural hazards. Aside from flooding, landslides emerge as a primary contributor to damage dealt by natural hazards. Traditional methods for landslide monitoring require on-site field measurements, which makes them resource-intensive and time-consuming. Moreover, the frequency of updating of existing landslide hazard maps is limited by resources and manpower. This research introduces the application of remote sensing technology, specifically Persistent Scatter Interferometry (PSI), as a complementary tool for updating hazard maps. PSI enables the identification of stable ground points, eliminating the need for labor-intensive fieldwork and facilitating assessments of potential slope instability. Two distinct PSI processing methods are evaluated in the study; the Temporal Model approach and the Spatial Correlation model approach. Findings reveal that the Temporal Model approach successfully detected 11,647 Persistent Scatterers (PS) points, while the Spatial Correlation approach identified 272,614 PS points. Furthermore, the Spatial Correlation approach demonstrated its capability to detect PS points within high landslide susceptibility areas. Consequently, the results highlight the suitability of the Spatial Correlation approach for detecting PS points, particularly in landslide-prone regions, offering support to local landslide hazard monitoring systems. This research supports the initiative to a more efficient and cost-effective approach to maintaining up-to-date landslide susceptibility maps in the Philippines in enhancing disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts.

Hybridizing genetic random forest and self-attention based CNN-LSTM algorithms for landslide susceptibility mapping in Darjiling and Kurseong, India

Landslides are a prevalent natural hazard in West Bengal, India, particularly in Darjeeling and Kurseong, resulting in substantial socio-economic and physical consequences. This study aims to develop a hybrid model, integrating a Genetic-based Random Forest (GA-RF) and a novel Self-Attention based Convolutional Neural Network and Long Short-term Memory (SA-CNN-LSTM), for accurate landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) and generate landslide vulnerability-building map in these regions. To achieve this, we compiled a database with 1830 historical data points, incorporating a landslide inventory as the dependent variable and 32 geo-environmental parameters from Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) layers as independent variables. These parameters include features like topography, climate, hydrology, soil properties, terrain distribution, radar features, and anthropogenic influences. Our hybrid model exhibited superior performance with an AUC of 0.92 and RMSE of 0.28, outperforming standalone SA-CNN-LSTM, GA-RF, RF, MLP, and TreeBagger models. Notably, slope, Global Human Modification (gHM), Combined Polarization Index (CPI), distances to streams and roads, and soil erosion emerged as key layers for LSM in the region. Our findings identified around 30% of the study area as having high to very high landslide susceptibility, 20% as moderate, and 50% as low to very low. The vulnerability-building map for 244,552 building footprints indicated varying landslide risk levels, with a significant proportion (27.74%) at high to very high risk. Our model highlighted high-risk zones along roads in the northeastern and southern areas. These insights can enhance landslide risk management in Darjeeling and Kurseong, guiding sustainable strategies for future damage qualification.

Game-theoretic optimization of landslide susceptibility mapping: a comparative study between Bayesian-optimized basic neural network and new generation neural network models.

Landslide susceptibility mapping is essential for reducing the risk of landslides and ensuring the safety of people and infrastructure in landslide-prone areas. However, little research has been done on the development of well-optimized Elman neural networks (ENN), deep neural networks (DNN), and artificial neural networks (ANN) for robust landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM). Additionally, there is a research gap regarding the use of Bayesian optimization and the derivation of SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values from optimized models. Therefore, this study aims to optimize DNN, ENN, and ANN models using Bayesian optimization for landslide susceptibility mapping and derive SHAP values from these optimized models. The LSM models have been validated using the receiver operating characteristics curve, confusion matrix, and other twelve error matrices. The study used six machine learning-based feature selection techniques to identify the most important variables for predicting landslide susceptibility. The decision tree, random forest, and bagging feature selection models showed that slope, elevation, DFR, annual rainfall, LD, DD, RD, and LULC are influential variables, while geology and soil texture have less influence. The DNN model outperformed the other two models, covering 7839.54 km2 under the very low landslide susceptibility zone and 3613.44 km2 under the very high landslide susceptibility zone. The DNN model is better suited for generating landslide susceptibility maps, as it can classify areas with higher accuracy. The model identified several key factors that contribute to the initiation of landslides, including high elevation, built-up and agricultural land use, less vegetation, aspect (north and northwest), soil depth less than 140 cm, high rainfall, high lineament density, and a low distance from roads. The study's findings can help stakeholders make informed decisions to reduce the risk of landslides and ensure the safety of people and infrastructure in landslide-prone areas.

Use of Spatial Data in Mapping Landslide Prone Areas in Luhurjaya and Surrounding Areas, Lebak Regency, Banten Province

Landslides are a natural process that occurs in a natural landscape on earth which can cause various environmental damage and can cause loss of life. An increase in the risk of landslides can be caused by uncontrolled land conversion due to the increasing population so that land development is necessary. The research was conducted in Luhurjaya and surrounding areas, Cipanas District, Lebak Regency, Banten with an area of 9 x 9 km. The spatial integration method was used to map landslide-prone zones using a scoring and weighting method, using five parameters, namely slope, rainfall, lineament density, rock type, and NDVI. Those five parameters are then overlaid to form a landslide susceptibility map. As a result of analyzing the research area based on these five parameters, it was found that this area has five slope classes, one rainfall class, five lineament density classes, three rock type classes, and four NDVI classes. After all the datas are scored and weighed, it was found that this research area can be classified to three zones, namely low landslide susceptibility zone, medium landslide susceptibility zone, and high landslide susceptibility zone. From the results of this analysis, disaster mitigation should be needed that can affect the community in the Lebak Regency area, Banten Province, namely in the form of providing provisions in the form of knowledge to the community regarding disaster management which is useful for minimizing the risk of the consequences of landslides

Landslide susceptibility evaluation in the Beas River Basin of North-Western Himalaya: A geospatial analysis employing the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method

In the North-Western Himalayas, particularly within the Beas Basin of Himachal Pradesh, landslide incidents are frequent, primarily due to the unique interplay of adverse geological conditions, heavy rainfall, and human factors. These incidents result in substantial loss of life and property each year. To mitigate such issues, systematic landslide research is essential, encompassing aspects like inventory mapping and risk assessment. This study leverages the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for an in-depth Landslide Susceptibility Index (LSI) mapping in the Beas River basin, employing remote sensing data to analyze key factors contributing to the region's instability. The process involved a detailed selection and mapping of landslide conditioning variables, guided by validated landslide inventory data and high-resolution remote sensing images, ensuring an accurate representation of the basin's geographical variations. The creation of the landslide susceptibility map utilized the weighted overlay approach, categorizing the area into five levels of susceptibility: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high. This classification incorporated ten critical factors influencing landslide occurrence, including elevation, slope aspect, slope angle, distance from drainage, lithology, distance from lineament, geomorphology, rainfall, and land use/land cover (LULC). The LSI was calculated through the Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) technique, leveraging the weights and ratings derived via the AHP method. This analysis revealed that approximately 634.1 square kilometers, or 12.8% of the region, face very high landslide susceptibility, followed by 22.6% at high, 25.8% with moderate, 24.4% at low, and 14.5% at very low susceptibility. The LSI map's accuracy in predicting landslides was affirmed through Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) and Area Under Curve (AUC) evaluations, showcasing an 86.3% precision rate. This classification facilitates focused interventions in high-risk areas, guiding planners in landslide-conscious development and infrastructure planning. It directs engineers toward engineering solutions like slope stabilization and drainage improvements to mitigate landslide effects. Moreover, this approach supports the creation of evacuation and emergency response plans, bolstering community resilience to landslide threats in the river basin.

Refined landslide susceptibility mapping in township area using ensemble machine learning method under dataset replenishment strategy

Landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) warrants considerable attention as a prerequisite for risk assessment and prevention in response to the increasing global occurrences of landslides. However, refined LSM at the township scale still faces the problem of the limited number of landslides and the oversight of relevant factors associated with different landslide types. This work is dedicated to propose a novel dataset replenishment strategy designed to address landslide sample scarcity, and to identify dominant factors in high landslide susceptibility zones to refine LSM at township scale for decision makers. Herein, the Wuling County in the Three Gorges Reservoir area of China was taken as taken as the research case. Initially, field investigation and calibration of 21 landslides yielded accumulation and rock areas, and the corresponding impact factors were therefore proposed to construct input features for machine learning facilitated by factor diagnosis using Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) and multicollinearity test. Subsequently, a training and validation dataset split of 8: 2 was randomly generated, enabling the application of ensemble machine learning model for LSM prediction. The study culminated in the feasibility of dataset replenishment strategy, which was employed to explore uncertainties and identify governing factors in LSM. The results indicate that the bagging-ANN model exhibits superior performance in both accumulation and rock areas, with Areas Under Curve (AUC) of 0.987 and 0.994. Furthermore, the dataset replenishment strategy emerges as instrumental in enhancing the reliability of LSM, as evidenced by an 8.97 % reduction in average value (AVG) and a 11.00 % increase in standard deviation (STD). The governing factors for landslides in accumulation and rock areas are designated as river erosion and height, respectively. Together with the excellent performance, this study is expected to provide a promising reference for LSM in other townships worldwide.

Landslide susceptibility zonation using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) in the Great Xi’an Region, China

This study aims to delineate landslide susceptibility maps using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method for the Great Xi’an Region, China, which is a key planning project for urban construction in Shaanxi Province, China from 2021 to 2035. Multiple data as elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, river density, soil, lithology, and land use have been considered for delineating the landslide susceptibility maps. Spatially thematic layers and distributed maps of all the aforementioned parameters were created in a GIS environment. Determine the relative importance of these thematic layers in the occurrence of landslides in the study area concerning historical landslide data to assign appropriate weights. Landslide sensitivity maps were generated by a weighted combination in a GIS environment after being analyzed by the AHP method. The sensitivity maps were categorized as “very high (11.06%), high (19.41%), moderate (23.03%), low (28.70%), and very low (17.80%)”. Overlay analysis of the test data with the LSM showed that the moderate to very high landslide susceptibility zones were able to contain 82.58% of the historic landslides. The results of the study help determine the landslide-prone areas in the area and provide a reference for subsequent construction. In addition, the analysis of landslide susceptibility in the area contributes to the study of landslides in similar loess sites.

Landslide Susceptibility Mapping using Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing Data in North Luwu, South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia

Climate, topography, and rock conditions in Indonesia are relatively diverse, both physical and chemical, these conditions can cause adverse consequences such as floods, landslides, forest fires, and droughts. The Information from Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation on Monday, July 13, 2020, flash floods and flow of debris due to landslides have occurred in Masamba and Baebunta, North Luwu, South Sulawesi Province. The purpose of this paper is to map the distribution of landslide susceptibility area using remote sensing and GIS data. The Method used to analyze the landslide susceptibility estimation model refers to the Indonesian Center for Agricultural Land Resources Research and Development (ICALRD). The parameters used in this model are rainfall, soil type, rock type, slope, land use, and land movement. The ICALRD Landslide Susceptibility Estimation Model in study area shows that there are three classes of landslide susceptibility, such as low, medium, and high susceptibilities. There are six subdistricts which are in medium to high landslide susceptibility, and the others are low to medium landslide susceptibility. The locations of landslides and flash floods that occurred in Masamba and Baebunta indicate areas with medium to high landslide susceptibility.

Assessment of Landslide Susceptibility using the AHP and GIS Techniques for the Zurbatiya Region, East of Iraq

The present study adopts AHP and GIS techniques to produce a landslide susceptibility index map of the Zurbatiya region. The research area is located in eastern Iraq, within Wasit Governorate. The local terrain predispositions were represented by the landslide conditioning parameters that were chosen: slope angles, geology, slope aspect, topographic elevation, distance from faults, and distance from valleys. The spatial resolution used for the raster-based study is 12.5×12.5 m. The AHP scale determines the relative importance of each element, with the slope angle having the largest weight (9) then geology and slope (7), aspect and elevation (5), and distance from faults and distance from valleys having the lowest relative importance (3). Depending on the landslide susceptibility index map, the low landslide susceptibility class has the highest percentage (41.2%) for the whole region, followed by the moderate landslide susceptibility class, which its share (39.9%), then the high landslide susceptibility class, with its share (14.8%), where, the very high share (3.9%). The landslide susceptibility index map was tested within the fieldwork stage in which 14 stations are selected within these four zones (low, moderate, high, and very high) where stations 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7 are distributed within the very high zone, station (8) within the high zone, stations 2, 9, 10 and 12 within the moderate zone and stations 11,13 and 14 within the low zone. Finally, it can be seen that they are an exact match when comparing the landslide susceptibility index map with the fieldwork stage, which is based on the previous failures and which are expected to occur. Toppling and Rock fall found within in the study area, in addition to the rolling that occurs later for the separated blocks by failure.

Integrating stratified best-worst method and GIS for landslide susceptibility assessment: a case study in Erzurum province (Turkey).

Landslides are among the most destructive geological disasters that seriously damage human life and infrastructures. Landslides mainly occur in mountainous regions around the world. One of the key processes to reduce these damages is to uncover landslide-exposed areas through different data-driven methods such as Geographical Information System (GIS) and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). In the literature, there are many studies developed with these fundamental tools. In this study, unlike the literature, a new landslide susceptibility assessment model is proposed by integrating GIS with the stratified best-worst method (S-BWM). This model has four main dimensions and 16 sub-dimensions under topography, environment-land, location, and hydrological factors, weighted with the S-BWM. A network was created considering the different states that may arise in the importance weights of these dimensions in the future. The transition probabilities of these states were predicted and injected into the classical BWM. Then, maps were created for these dimensions and classifications for each sub-dimension according to the map characteristics. Finally, the most susceptive landslide locations were determined with GIS-based calculations. To demonstrate the model's applicability, a case study was conducted for the Erzurum region, one of Turkey's landslide-prone regions. In addition, besides the landslide map, an analysis and discussion about the spatial distribution of susceptibility classes was presented, contributing to the study's robustness. In the results of landslide susceptibility analysis, landslides are higher in the range of about 1600-2500m. Approximately 42% (35.59 sq. km) of the study area has high landslide susceptibility, while 58% (64.41 sq. km) has medium and low landslide susceptibility.

Potential Factors of Landslide Recurrence in Uttaradit, Thailand: A Case Study in Laplae, Mueang Uttaradit, and Tha Pla Districts

Laplae, Mueang Uttaradit, and Tha Pla district, Uttaradit province, Thailand are considered as high potential landslide areas. Still, this disaster is difficult to address because of complex factors controlling its occurrence. Therefore, the prediction of the potential landslide area using a landslide susceptibility map has been able to accomplish as a great strategy for the disaster. A landslide susceptibility map was produced by the geographic information system (GIS) data. The methods were initially conducted by the selection of potential factors related to landslides, which were lithology, slope, aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, distance to stream, land use, and rainfall. All factors were assigned coefficients weight, and analyses frequency ratio (FR). Then, the weighted variables have been combined and ranked into five different susceptibility levels, which were very low, low, medium, high, and very high. Finally, the produced landslide susceptibility map has been validated by the success rate and prediction rate. After the analysis, the high and the very high landslide susceptibility area were dominantly covered in the northern and northwest parts of the study area; and the factor of slope, land use, and lithology potentially caused the landslide risk indicated by high frequency ratio values. In addition, the produced landslide susceptibility map had high accuracy, about 90% of success rate and prediction rate, calculated from the area under the curve (AUC), this map would be beneficial for geological hazard management and land use planning. The landslide susceptibility map and the GIS-based methods can be applied to the regional area with additional benefits to well-being, society, and the environment.

Comparative analysis of certainty factor and analytic hierarchy process for landslide susceptibility zonation in parts of Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India

The state of Himachal Pradesh in India is one of the most important hotspots when it comes to landslides; and Kandaghat, a tehsil in the Solan district of Himachal Pradesh having religious and tourism importance, is substantially affected by frequent landslides causing road blocking. In the present study, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and certainty factor (CF) techniques, which form part of the geographic information system (GIS)-based landslide susceptibility models, were used to prepare a landslide susceptibility map for the Kandaghat region, for which, as a preliminary step, an inventory of 214 live landslides was prepared from the Bhukosh data directory. The landslide inventory was cross-verified on the Google Earth platform. About nine landslide causative factors (slope, curvature, aspect, soil, rainfall, land use–land cover, lithology, drainage density and lineament density) were considered for the study area, and against the backdrop of these, the corresponding thematic maps were prepared and used in turn for the preparation of the final landslide susceptibility map. Based on the two mentioned techniques, the thematic maps were assigned weights according to their prominence and dynamic processes in the study area. The model performance for each method was evaluated using the area under the curve (AUC), and the accuracies for the AHP and CF were ascertained as, respectively, 81% and 85.6%. The Himalayan terrains are significantly prone to landslides, and this study outlines the characteristics of one of the important Himalayan towns in terms of vulnerability for landslides, together with providing its classification in terms of slope deformation susceptibility; this procedure can help direct attention towards areas needing to be classified under high to very high landslide susceptibility zones.