A GIS Approach Towards Landslide Susceptibility Mapping of Aizawl District, Mizoram, India

One of the natural threats that lie behind the obstacle to development is the landslide. Huge amounts of natural resources and human resources are lost annually due to landslides. One of the approaches to reducing landslide danger is landslide risk mapping. Aizawl district of Mizoram suffers from landslides every year resulting in extensive loss of life and property. The present study thus undertakes landslide susceptibility mapping of the Aizawl district using the weighted sum method. For preparing a landslide susceptibility map, the authors have taken eleven thematic layers/parameters, which are—elevation, aspect, slope, curvature, distance from the road, distance from the stream, NDWI, NDVI, TWI, NDBI, and geology. The thematic layers have been integrated into a GIS environment and multiplied by each conditioning weight. The results show that only 13.52% of the total area is ‘very low susceptible’, while 8.40% of the total area is ‘very high susceptible’ to landslide. ‘High susceptible areas’ made up 19.40% of the total area, followed by ‘medium susceptible’ areas at 30.34% and ‘low susceptible’ areas at 28.35%. The only way to reduce the threat of landslides is by undertaking an accurate evaluation of its susceptible zones. The current susceptibility zones have been examined by ROC where AUC is 0.77. The authors are hopeful that landslide risk can be reduced if proper management techniques can be implemented according to the susceptibility severity and it will be helpful for proper sustainable management of the entire district.