Geostatistical Analysis for Mapping of Soil Properties

Rainfall-induced landslides are amongst the most frequent hazards in Singapore. Most of those slope instabilities occur in residual soils and are triggered by intense and long rains. In the future, rainfall-induced landslides are expected to be more frequent due to climate change. For prevention against such incidents, the knowledge about hazardous areas is required. A common tool for evaluating such areas is landslide hazard map. Normally, a combination of field and desk studies based on different geological maps are used for landslide hazard map. In Singapore a lot of researches and studies have been done on residual soils. Therefore, the characteristic of residual soil properties were used as basis for landslide hazard mapping in this study. One challenge of this approach is to transform measurements made at point locations into an output of a continuous field. Geostatistical analysis could be the solution for this problem. Geostatistics provides methods for interpolating spatial data. This study presents a possible method of geostatistical analysis for mapping of soil properties as a part of landslide hazard map.