GIS and Remote Sensing in Hydrology, Water Resources and Environment (Proceedings of ICGRHWE held at the Three Gorges Dam, China, September 2003). IAHS Publ. 289, 2004, 385-391

1 Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

axing@lreis.ac.cn; azhu@wisc.edu

2 Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA

3 Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China

Abstract This paper presents an approach of integrating knowledge of relationships between landslide and environment conditions with GIS and fuzzy logic to map spatial variation of landslide susceptibility. The GIS techniques were used to derive spatial data characterizing the environmental conditions under which landslides occur. An inference technique constructed under fuzzy logic combines the spatial data on environmental conditions with knowledge of landslide–environment relationships to compute the landslide susceptibility of a location. A case study over a small watershed in the Three Gorges area was conducted to evaluate the validity of this approach. The case study showed that the computed susceptibility values are much higher over areas with landslides than areas without landslides. Thus, we conclude that the approach is capable of capturing landslide susceptibility. However, the accuracy of the computed susceptibility depends on the quality of knowledge on landslide–environment relationships and the ability of GIS in characterizing the environment conditions needed.

Key words expert system; fuzzy logic; GIS; land use planning; landslides; susceptibility