Landslide susceptibility analysis and hazard zonation of Koh-e-Suleman range using weighted overlay technique

A healthy environment improves the quality of life on Earth, while natural disasters affect the quality of the environment. An area’s Landslide Hazard Zonation (LHZ) provides key information about the susceptibility to natural or manmade disasters. Using the Weighted Overlay Technique, this research aims to develop the landslide susceptibility and zonation mapping of Koh-e-Suleman Range (a hill station around the heritage site). Six causative factors are evaluated: geology, elevation, slope inclination, distance from streams, type of soil, and annual rainfall intensity, considering equal risk influence for all the factors. All causative factor maps were generated to yield equal classes and provide uniformity to the results except for soil types found in the study area. The findings indicate that the study area may comprise four landslide hazard zones with high, medium, low, and very low-intensity susceptibility of landslides. The accuracy of the final LHZ map is verified by comparing the hazard zonation area percentages with the global landslide inventory map from a macro-study of NASA. It was found that the study areas largely fall within low- and very low-hazard zones.