A Geospatial Approach to Assess the Liquefaction Vulnerability of Kutch District, Gujarat—A Case Study

Abstract

The study investigated the influences of earthquake on soil liquefaction utilizing multi-temporal datasets of Landsat ETM+ and ancillary datasets of seismicity, LULC, soil, hydrology, Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) and Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) of the earthquake. The study has identified vulnerable liquefaction zones of Kucth region of Gujarat using Remote Sensing and GIS based multi-criteria analysis technique. The obtained results have categorized the study area into 6 vulnerability zone- very low, low, significant, high, very high and severe. The results shown that the NDMI value was increased significantly from −0.01 to 0.20 after earthquake. It has been observed that most of liquefaction has been predicted for Wetlands land use category. The study has also shown liquefaction probability equally high for those areas having red gravelly and red loamy soils.