Quantitative hill-slope stability assessment with a remote sensing & GIS based distributed modeling scheme

Abstract

Natural disasters such as landslide and soil erosion are severe in China. Therefore, effective evaluation of slope stability further provides the warning for local/regional soil erosion, which is essential to the precise prediction and effective prevention of these catastrophes. Many approaches have been proposed in assessing slope stability and landslide hazards in the literature. In this study, a distributed modeling scheme based on digital elevation model (DEM), takes advantage of geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing information coupling with the Infinite Slope Stability Model to quantify topographic attributes related to slope instability and land sliding so as to mapping the hill-slope stability entitled as SINMAP was introduced briefly, and its application with some improvements on a meso-scale watershed at Shanxi province was conducted and tested with the discussion of the field observations. The experimental application indicated its good applicability and operational value in quantitative evaluation of surface stabilities in basin scale areas in China. © 2005 IEEE.