GIS -based landslide susceptibility modelling of the territory of the Republic of Macedonia

Abstract

Landslides are natural disasters which have impact in many areas around the world including the territory of the Republic of Macedonia. In this country, about 300 large landslides are registered, most of which cause serious damage to the infrastructure almost every year. In that sense, the mapping of sites that are susceptible to landslides is essential for management of these areas. This is a crucial step to prevent landslides in places where this could be expected or to minimize its damages. Therefore, an approach of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) assessment of potential landslides in the area of the Republic of Macedonia is presented in this paper. That is because of the high impact of landslides on the environment, socio-demographic situation, local economy and especially infrastructure. GIS tools and statistical methods for modeling and simulation allow the application of frequency ratio model for analyzing the number landslide events in any class of a predetermined set of factors. Selected factors that have the strongest influence on the landslide activity are lithology, slope angle, land cover (using CLC2012), slope curvature, distance from rivers and distance from roads. The results show significant area with high landslide susceptibility which is confirmed with data for the existing landslides. There are two advantages of the implemented model. First this model uses clear and logical criteria for analysis and the second is based on empirical data about real landslide events. Therefore, the landslide susceptibility map created with this model provides fairly objective assessment of the landslide susceptibility within the study area and the results of this research are of great importance because they will speed up the compilation of landslide inventory map.