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Plenary Lecture
An Overview on the Landslide Susceptibility Assessment Techniques
Professor Murat Ercanoglu
Hacettepe University Geological Engineering Department
06800 Beytepe, Ankara
Turkey
Abstract:
Natural disasters and their consequences
have considerable and destructive effects on human life, properties,
infrastructures, and, of course, on environment. One of the most
important natural hazards, landslides play a very important role in
these effects throughout the world. Therefore, many countries,
particularly the developed ones, invest huge amount of money either in
mitigation or in prevention of landslides. The first, and probably the
most important, stage of mitigation an/or prevention efforts is to
assess landslide susceptibility by obtaining data related to
landslides, i.e. preparation of landslide inventory and database. If
taken into consideration, results of these assessments, i.e. landslide
susceptibility maps, will provide useful information and economic
benefits for urban planning, development plans, engineering
applications, land use potential planning, and so on.
When the international scientific literature related to landslide
assessments is examined, there have been an increasing interest in
landslide susceptibility mapping studies in the last decades, instead
of evaluating hazard and/or risk. Particularly, in recent years,
depending upon the breakthroughs in computer technology, GIS
(Geographic Information System), and RS (Remote Sensing) techniques,
very important developments were achieved in these studies. This can
be concluded as one of the most promising efforts with respect to
combat with natural hazards since they opened wide range of
opportunities for analysing, evaluating, and assessing earth
processes, notably for landslides. Thus, there are a multitude of
studies carried out by different researchers in different parts of the
world with the aid of these technological items.
In this study, it was aimed at assessing landslide susceptibility
techniques by means of a detailed literature survey based on an
overview including twenty years’ experiences. The techniques were
categorized into two distinct groups such as qualitative and
quantitative ones, and examined individually. By doing so, a
historical development of the techniques and actual trends in
landslide susceptibility assessments were evaluated. It was revealed
that some traditional methods seemed to have disappeared, while the
new ones, particularly included in the GIS softwares, became very
popular. However, at present, there seems to be no agreement on these
techniques which is the most effective among the researchers.
Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Murat Ercanoglu is a Geological Engineer, PhD. His main areas of
interest are Landslides and Engineering Geology. In addition, he has
got experience of utilization GIS, Remote Sensing, and Artificial
Intelligence techniques such as fuzzy logic and neural networks for
his research. He has been studying on landslides more than 10 years,
and he has got national and international papers commonly on this
subject. He is working at Hacettepe University Geological Engineering
Department (Ankara, Turkey) as an Associate Proffessor in Applied
Geology Division. |
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