C. Prakasam

By C. Prakasam, Aravinth R., Varinder S. Kanwar and B. Nagarajan

Among other natural hazards, Landslides are the most prominent and frequently occurring natural disaster in the state of Himachal Pradesh with higher socio-economical losses. About 0.42 million sq.kms of area are prone to landslide activities in our country that is excluding the snow covered areas. The current research focuses on estimating the landslide risk zones of the Shimla Tehsil, Himachal Pradesh using various statistical models. Landslide contributing factors as such Landuse Landcover, Elevation, Slope, Lithology, Soil, Geology and Geomorphology has been used to assess the Landslide risk factors. Data obtained from LANDSAT 8 OLI sensors, SRTM DEM, Soil and Land Use Survey of India and SOI Toposheets have been used as sources. Weighted Overlay, Fuzzy logic and Analytical Hierarchical Process models will be used to categorize the Vulnerability and risk Zones of the study area. The causative factors were analyzed and processed in GIS environment. These values will be then being integrated using various studied models to produce individual landslide vulnerability and risk zones. The results reveal that most of the study area falls under Very Low risk category with a total coverage of 67.34%. Low and Moderate area covers about 23% and 9.13% of the study area. Higher risk areas only account for about 0.46%. Higher percent of the study area is mostly covered by settlements. National highways, Metal roads, Slopes and Denser settlements are located along the Moderate and low risk areas. The results retrieved from the WOM model reveals a total of 55% of the area comes under very low category. Low and Moderate category covers about 31.4% and 10.6% of the study area. High and Very High category cover a total of 1.9% together.

Part of the book: Slope Engineering

By C. Prakasam and R. Saravanan

Salem region is one of the drought inclined areas of Tamil Nadu. Being a rural zone, the area is finding a mitigation measure to keep the agribusiness on run. As a mitigation measure mapping the potential groundwater zones in the examination area will be a great alternate wellspring of water for the rural reason. The objective is to delineate the potential locations of groundwater zones using GIS software for the Metturtown panchayat, Salem district. The study area is inclined to drought. The different parameters that control the groundwater fluctuations, for example, geomorphology, contour, topography, LULC, soil; rainfall is broken down together as thematic maps. The slope map will be set up from DEM. These maps have been overlaid and the spatial analysis method, weighted overlay analysis using the GIS has been carried out. The ranking/weightage will be specified for every distinct bound of each thematic map. The weightages/rankings were relegated according to each thematic layer influence with respect to the Soil, LULC, and density of drainage, rainfall, and slope. The resultant maps display the groundwater potential zones ranging from very good to very poor zones.

Part of the book: Geographic Information Systems and Applications in Coastal Studies