Assessment of landslide susceptibility at a local spatial scale applying the multi-criteria analysis and GIS: a case study from Slovakia

Landslide susceptibility is an important topic mainly because its geo-spatial analysis provides a useful tool for planning, disaster management and hazard mitigation. In this study, the aim is to identify and analyze landslide susceptibility at a local spatial scale, which is represented by the town of Handlova, using the multi-criteria evaluation (i.e., the analytical hierarchy process technique - AHP) and geographic information systems (GIS). The following landslide conditioning factors were selected representing the local terrain predispositions: slope angle, geology, slope aspect, elevation, distance from rivers, distance from faults and land use. The raster-based analysis was performed using the spatial resolution of 10 x 10 m. The weights for each factor were determined by the AHP technique where slope angle had the highest relative importance. Based on the resulting susceptibility map, 51.98% out of the total study area is characterized by high and very high susceptibility class. The Atlas of Slope Stability of the Slovak Republic, which contains past landslides until 2006, was used for verification of the results. The verification confirmed a moderate accuracy between the landslide susceptibility map and landslide inventory from the atlas since 60.8% of all landslide areas from the atlas corresponded with high and very high susceptibility class.