Integration of statistical and heuristic approaches for landslide risk analysis: a case of volcanic mountains in West Java Province, Indonesia

Abstract

Owing to fragile geo-morphology, extreme climatic conditions, and densely populated settlements and rapid development activities, West Java Province is the most landslide hazardous area in Indonesia. So, a landslide risk map for this province bears a great importance such as for land-use planning. It is however widely accepted that landslide risk analysis is often difficult because of the difficulties involved in landslide hazard assessment and estimation of consequences of future landslide events. For instance, lack of multi-temporal inventory map or records of triggering events is often a major problem in landslide hazard mapping. In this study, we propose a simple technique for converting a landslide susceptibility map into a landslide hazard map, which we have employed for landslide risk analysis in one ideally hazardous part of volcanic mountains in West Java Province. The susceptibility analysis was carried out through correlation between past landslides and eight spatial parameters related to instability, i.e. slope, aspect, relative relief, distance to river, geological units, soil type, land use and distance to road. The obtained susceptibility map was validated using cross-time technique, and was collaborated with the frequency-area statistics to respond to ‘when landslide will occur’ and ‘how large it will be’. As for the judgment of the consequences of future landslides, expert opinion was used considering available literature and characteristic of the study area. We have only considered economic loss in terms of physical damage of buildings, roads and agricultural lands for the landslide risk analysis. From this study, we understand the following: (1) the hazard map obtained from conversion of the susceptibility map gives spatial probability and the area of an expected landslide will be greater than 500m² in the next 2 years, (2) the landslide risk map shows that 24% of the total area is in high risk; 30% in moderate risk; 45% in low risk and no risk covers only 1% of the total area, and (3) the loss will be high in agricultural lands, while it will be low in the road structures and buildings.

Keywords:

• statistical approach
• heuristic approach
• landslide
• risk analysis
• West Java Province

Acknowledgements

We owe a lot to Mr. Eros Yudhistira, an undergraduate student of the Department of Geological Engineering, Gadjah Mada University, for his help in collecting the maps and in the field. We also thank Dr. Agung Setianto, an Associate Professor at the Department of Geological Engineering, Gadjah Mada University, for his assistance in the field.