ABSTRACT
Landslide susceptibility assessment maps are fundamental and necessary tools for natural disaster management and land use planning. In the central part of Greece, landslide events are common, causing significant damages to settlements and road networks. In the present study, a landslide susceptibility assessment map was produced by using multicriteria model. A mountainous part of Central Greece was taken as the case study of the work.
Nine factors affecting landslide occurrences of the study area were used in the applied method. Each factor was divided into several classes, which were further rated from zero to four, representing different landslide hazard levels. The analytical hierarchy process was combined with Geographical Information System to support the evaluation and the calculation of weighting coefficient of the selected factors and to produce a landslide susceptibility assessment map. The influence of uncertainty of the weighting coefficient of factors on the landslide susceptibility assessment results was examined, and three scenarios were developed, leading to the corresponding landslide susceptibility assessment maps. Finally, a landslide inventory map was generated, using the Earth observation data, and further utilized for the verification of the landslide susceptibility assessment map.
The results of the proposed method proved that the areas of very high and high landslide susceptibility are located mostly at the northwestern, western, and southwestern parts of the study area. These areas suffer from a large number of landslides, mainly due to the prevailing geological and morphological conditions. The uncertainty analysis of the applied model demonstrated insignificant differences on the spatial and quantitative distribution of the landslide susceptibility zones, showing a robust behavior for the model predictions.
The landslide susceptibility map demonstrated sufficient correlation between the landslide susceptibility zones and the spatial distribution of the landslide phenomena. This reveals that the applied method leads to reliable results and can definitely be used for the assessment of sites susceptible to landslides. The proposed procedure and the landslide susceptibility assessment map can be implied by planners, engineers, and local authorities in spatial planning and landslide hazard mitigation strategy.
