Landslide Hazard Assessment and Vulnerability Studies for the State of Sikkim, India Based on Multicriteria Analytical Hierarchical Approach

Abstract eng:
Many landslides which in past which were either induced by rainfall or by earthquakes, have caused severe damages to infrastructures and human in the hilly regions around the world. In India, the most sensitive areas of landslides are the Himalayan region, regions in the Northeast and the Western ghats. As the steep slopes in the Himalayas and Northeast India are in the proximity of one of the most active plate boundary regions in the world, the seismic induced landslide hazard is very high in these regions. The 2011 earthquake of magnitude (M w ) 6.9 along the India-Nepal border, has triggered more than 300 landslides in Sikkim, affecting transportation and power infrastructures in the state. The Nepal earthquake of 2015 M w 7.8 has also triggered landslides in various part of Nepal-China border and Sikkim, India. Many landslide zonation works have been carried out in the recent past for various part of India. However, the amount of work has published toward the zonation based on quantitatively assessed landslide hazard, especially at a macro-level is very limited. Hence this study presents a comprehensive landslide hazard assessment considering both earthquake as well as rainfall induced, for the state of Sikkim, India, situated in the Himalayas. It is evident that the landslide hazard at a location is influenced by many factors such as intensity of rainfall, seismic ground shaking, terrain slope and landcover. In this paper these landslide hazard parameters are quantitatively assessed and integrated to hazard index on a GIS platform using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has found its widest of applications in multicriteria decision. This paper presents a comprehensive landslide hazard zonation map, based on the spatial distribution of these hazard index (HI), representing the consolidated effect of both earthquake and rainfall on landslide initiation at a given location. A landslide hazard and vulnerability map at macro-level can provide key information which is helpful while planning big construction projects. Further, based on the land-use map developed from remote sensing images, a landslide vulnerability study for the study area is carried out and presented in this paper.

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