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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
1.1 LANDSLIDE HAZARD
Natural earth processes contribute significantly in shaping the landscape of
earth, and some of them are hazardous to people. These natural hazards must be
recognized and must be avoided wherever possible, and their threat to human life and
property must be minimized.
The landslides are one such type of hazards usually triggered by the neo-
tectonic movements, earthquakes, heavy precipitation and those induced due to land-
use changes such as felling of trees, agriculture, mining and road cutting in hilly
terrain. Slopes are one the most common landforms, and though most slopes appear
stable and static; they are actually dynamic evolving systems. Material on most of the
slopes is constantly moving down at rates that vary with imperceptible creep of soil
and rock to thundering avalanches and rock-falls moving at tremendous speeds.
Landslides are caused in hilly terrains due to factors like gravity, weathering,
deforestation, earthquake, heavy precipitation etc, and result in loss to property and
life. Landslide is a general term used to describe the down-slope of soil, rock and
organic material under the influence of gravity. This phenomena cause property
damage, injury, death and adversely affect a variety of resources in the disaster areas.
The remote sensing and GIS based approach to map and study methodology
involves generation of geomorphic map, NDVI map, soil map, slope map, DEM,
drainage and lineament map, land use / land cover change map. LANDSAT TM and
ASTER images have been used to generate a few of these thematic maps. Existing
literature have also been referred to generate the thematic maps. To identify the
vulnerable areas, the above-mentioned parameters were analyzed in a GIS by
assigning appropriate ranks and weights.
The result is a landslide hazard zonation map showing regions with varying
degrees of vulnerability to landslides. It is opined that such a map (which is derived
from the analysis of the causative factors) will enable to propose and implement
suitable mitigating measures, thus preventing loss of life and property in the hilly
area.



1.2 LANDSLIDE SCENARIO IN INDIA
India is vulnerable to different natural hazards due to its proximity to
geodynamically active locales and unique climatic pattern. Both these factors in
different combinations lead to the occurrence of disasters resulting from natural
hazards like floods, earthquakes, draught, cyclones and landslides in different parts of
the country at frequent intervals.



Fig.1.1 Landslide Hazard Zonation for India.
Landslide hazard is one of the most significant hazards that affect different
parts of India every year during the rainy season. It has been observed that Himalaya
ranges, North east India, Nilgiris, Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats, are affected by
this hazard every year and suffer heavy losses in terms of life, infrastructure and
property.
Landslide is one of the major natural hazards that are commonly experienced
in hilly terrains all over the world. Landslides affect at least 15 per cent of the land
area of Indiaan area which exceeds 0.49 million km
2
. In India the incidence of
landslides in Himalayas and other hill ranges is an annual and recurring phenomenon.
There is a variation in the degree of landslide incidences in various hill ranges. For
example, the landslide incidences are high to very high in Himalayas, high in North-
eastern hill ranges, high to moderate in Western Ghats & Nilgiris and low in the hill
ranges of Eastern Ghats & Vindhyas.



The disaster situation in the country is further compounded by increased
vulnerabilities related to rapidly growing population, unplanned urbanization and fast-
paced industrialization, rapid development in high risk areas, environmental
degradation and climate change. It is observed that impact of natural disasters is felt
more severely by people who are socioeconomically weak because their habitats are
located in vulnerable areas and not designed to withstand the impact of natural
disasters. Therefore, the processes of poverty eradication and disaster management are
intricately linked.
1.3 LANDSLIDE VULNERABILITY SCENARIO IN INDIA
Indias vulnerability to landslides is seen in the threat of landslides to our
housing and infrastructure, farms and fields, vast stretches of border roads and railway
lines, hydro-electric and water supply installations, transmission line projects, aerial
ropeways, open cast mines, tunnels, heritage buildings and monasteries, pilgrim
routes, and tourist spots. Having defined the terms landslide hazard, vulnerability, and
risk, it follows that the scientific approach to dealing with the perceived threat is to
first establish landslide hazard and vulnerability scenarios for reliable risk analyses.
Vulnerability to landslides can be evaluated only if we know the exposure to
landslide hazard and our preparedness to face that hazard. Vulnerability will be close
to nil in the case of well managed and protected slopes. It will be the maximum for
unprepared populations living on slopes with a proven history of landslides.
This vulnerability to landslides can be reduced by creating a culture of safety
through careful land use planning, timely and appropriate engineering intervention,
conscientious maintenance of slopes and connected utilities, early warning, public
awareness, and preparedness. We need to develop a culture of quick response to
managing disasters to reduce the impact of landslide disasters.
Once we know the landslide hazard and vulnerability profile, specific risk can
be determined. The total risk is then the multiple of the specific risk and elements like
population, property, infrastructure, and development activities exposed to landslide
hazards. The main purpose of this exercise is to visualise a relationship between
landslide hazards, risk, and impact of a landslide, possibly in terms of quantified loss
for safer construction.
The Himalayan mountain ranges and hilly tracts of the North-Eastern
region are highly susceptible to slope instability due to the immature and rugged


topography, fragile rock conditions, high seismicity resulting from proximity to the
plate margins, and high rainfall. Extensive anthropogenic interference, as part of
developmental activities, is another significant factor that increases this hazard
manifold. As a result, the landscape in the Himalayan and North-Eastern regions is
highly susceptible to reoccurrence of landslides. The Ambutia landslide, located on
the picturesque tea garden clad hill slopes around the Kurseong town in Darjeeling is
probably the largest such landslide in Asia.
Similarly, the Western Ghats, overlooking the Konkan coast, though located in
a relatively stable domain, experience the fury of this natural hazard due to steep hill
slopes, overburden and high intensity rainfall. The Nilgiri hills located at the
convergence zone of the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats bear the innumerable
scars of landslides due to their location in a zone of high intensity and protracted
rainfall where overburden is sensitive to over-saturation. In addition to landslides, the
snow avalanche is another natural hazard involving mass movement that is
experienced at high altitudes in the Himalayan terrain during the late winter season
when the snow starts melting.
Since the beginning of the civilization natural hazards have threatened
human lives and environmental ecosystem. Landslide is one type of hazard,
accounting for large damage on properties in mountainous regions of the world in
terms of both direct and indirect cost each year. Landslides are defined as the
movement of masses of rocks, debris or earth down a slope (Cruden, 1991).
With the growing population density and industrial development in these areas
the threat of landslide disaster has increased, Assessing vulnerability of an area has
thus become a basis for information to recognize measure and predict risk for
mitigation and prevention of an expected land slide disaster. Different scientific
groups have different view on quantifying and assessing vulnerability. For disasters
this is determined by exposure and susceptibility to harm. Exposure in turn is
determined by the relative location to the hazard, whereas susceptibility is based on
the socio-economic, environmental, and psychological variables that intervene in
producing different impacts amongst people at a similar level of exposure.
Vulnerability assessment of landslides however is complex and different from
the other hazards such as flooding and earthquakes. The reason is that landslides
occur at comparatively isolated locations leading to damage at point locations and not
within large areas. Modelling of landslide vulnerability is also complex as the spatial


and temporal uncertainty of landslides is caused by different types of elements at the
risk. In fact, movement of people and vehicles on roads is dynamic and changes over
during the day, during a week, or during a season.

1.4 ROLE OF LANDSLIDE ZONATION AND VULNERABILITY
ASSESMENT IN LANDSLIDE PREDCTION
Among the natural hazards, slope failure processes are the major cause of
concern in mountainous terrain, since they not only retard the developmental activities
in hilly areas, but also destroy lives and property and cause heavy environmental
damages. The landslides are the cause of some of the worst human suffering in the
past. Landslide, erosion and other slope failure processes are the most frequent natural
calamity occurring under varied natural conditions. It is therefore, imperative that
slopes vulnerable to failure should be identified in advance, so that proper measures
may be taken up to check the failure processes. Alternatively, developmental
activities may be planned in accordance with the slope stability conditions of a hilly
region. However, this requires a thorough understanding of causative processes and
their relationship with various geo-environmental factors. This can be achieved by
preparing landslide hazard zonation map depicting areas of slope failure accordance
to their degree of severity.
Hazard zonation map comprises of a map demarcating the stretches or areas
of varying degrees of anticipated slope stability or instability. The map has an inbuilt
element of forecasting and is hence of probabilistic nature. Depending upon the
methodology adopted and the comprehensiveness of the input data used, a landslide
hazard zonation map can be used to provide the aspects of occurrence time of
occurrence type of landslide, extent of the slope area likely to be affected and rate of
mass movement of the slope mass. The vulnerability assessment is done from the
landslide hazard zonation map and the physical, social, economical vulnerability is
assessed. According to severity of vulnerability proper preventive measures are to be
suggested.
1.5 ROLE OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS
It is observed that advancement in Remote Sensing,GIS or the Geoinformatic
tools can help on a great extent in hazard zonation, vulnerability assessment and
management of preventive measures and effective mitigation.


Remote sensing and GIS provide the tool for effective, efficient storage and
manipulation of remotely sensed and policy oriented information. This can be used to
facilitate measurement, mapping, monitoring of variety of data types related to natural
phenomenon such as landslides. This study aims at proposing the strategy for
Landslide hazard zonation mapping, vulnerability assessment of high risk zones and
proper management for risk reduction and mitigation for post land slide rehabilitation.
Fortunately the spatial information systems and the geo-informatics are well
advanced to study the available digital spatial data. The GIS with its features of
location, condition, trends, patterns and modeling is the fast and effective tool in
synchronism with remote sensing. In the proposed study the effort will be made to
develop the ideas for landslide hazard zonation mapping based on Image
interpretation keys and developed GIS database.
Integration of remote sensing and GIS allows most accurate and most updated
data base on land information. It has been found to be very useful tool in combination
with spatial data and very useful deriving the ideas for efficient management and
mitigation during the landslide disaster. Also in developing various layers like slope
map, drainage map, flow direction map, flow accumulation map, land use map, soil
map, settlement map and various point maps with different attributes etc. It has been
experienced that the manual estimation and heavy field work is tedious and
cumbersome process and often discourages the engineer from developing the regional
methodologies for developing landslide management and mitigation plan.
The aim of the research proposed is to formulate an efficient methodology to
delineate the Landslide hazard areas.
One of the greatest advantages of using remote sensing data for landslide
study is its ability to generate information in spatial and temporal domain, which is
very crucial for successful analysis, prediction and validation. However, the use of RS
technology involves large amount of spatial data management and requires an
efficient system to handle such data. The GIS is useful in management of large and
complex databases. Image data have been used as a primary raster to generate various
layers in present study.
Information in thematic mapping which in turn can be utilized inpredicting
and presenting the generated landslide hazard data. The remote sensing data provides
synoptic view of a fairly large area in the narrow and discrete bands of the


electromagnetic spectrum at regular intervals. The space borne multi spectral data
enable generating timely, reliable and cost Effective information after applying
various image interpretation keys to discover the parameters of landslide hazard. For
many purposes, remote sensing data alone is not sufficient and need to be merged
with data from other sources. Hence a multitude of spatially related data e.g.
concerning Geotechnical, geographic/ geologic data, topography, rainfall, vegetation,
geomorphology, and drainage pattern, seismicity etc. are to be considered.
It offers efficient tools for handling both the data sets also allows for both
spatial data base organizations and non spatial data base organizations, mainly as
spatial attributes of spatial elements. It also performs integrated analysis and
transformation for obtaining required information.
Remote sensing technology helps in identifying, locating and ultimately in
mapping greater precision. Remote sensing data in the form of satellite imageries
can be used to study land features and natural resources and dynamic human
activities and towards preparation of thematic maps.
1.6 OVERVIEW OF LANDSLIDE HAZARD MAPPING AND THE
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING PROCESS
The susceptibility of a given area to landslides can be determined and depicted
using hazard zonation. A landslide hazard map can be prepared early in the planning
study and developed in more detail as the study progresses. It can be used as a tool to
help identify land areas best suited for development by examining the potential risk of
land sliding. Furthermore, once landslide susceptibility is identified, investment
projects can be developed which avoid, prevent, or substantially mitigate the hazard.
1.7 STUDY AREA
In Western Ghats (recently declared as World Heritage by UNESCO) many
human habitats, tourist places & highways are vulnerable to landslide .Hence we have
chosen Mahabaleshwar-Poladpur road (S.H.-72 ) as our study area which connects
two major tourist regions of Maharashtra. This highway is blocked many times in
rainy season because of landslide & hence due attention must be given to Hazard
Zonation Mapping, Vulnerability assessment & mitigative recommendations.
Landslide hazard zonation helps in identifying strategic points and geographically
critical areas prone to landslides along this highway. In this study, a methodology has


been developed to identify landslide prone areas using Remote Sensing and tools of
GIS environment like ILWIS software.

1.8 OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
Study the Geo- informatics approach towards Landslide Hazard and Vulnerability.
Study the Spectral signature or reflectance characteristics of land with respect to
slope instability.
Study in detail the geomorphology, slope, lineaments, relative relief, Land-use,
NDVI and drainage aspects of the Landslide area.
Study the image interpretation keys or photo reorganization elements to identify
Pre-occurred events and vulnerable sites.
Develop a spatial database for landslide analysis
Prepare the landslide susceptibility or Hazard Zonation Map after the analysis of
generated RS and GIS layer combinations.
Study geo -environmental and socio parameters related to the landslide
vulnerability.
Delineate the Vulnerable areas.
Prepare Landslide Vulnerability Assessment with respect to Construction
Management activities.
Provide a decision support tool for hazard managers and planners

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