Relative Landslide Risk Assessment for the City of Valjevo

Abstract

This paper represents a relative landslide risk assessment of the City of Valjevo in Western Serbia. After the extreme rainfall during the May 2014, many new landslides were triggered, and Valjevo was one of the most affected areas in Serbia. The modeling was preceded by the data selection, and included ranging and preprocessing of the conditioning factors. The following eight factors were chosen as representative: stream distance, slope, lithology, elevation, distance from hydrogeological borders, land use, erodibility and aspect. Landslide susceptibility analysis was completed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) multi-criteria method. Validation was performed by cross-referencing with an existing landslide inventory, which was made by field mapping and interpretation of satellite images. Finally, the relative risk was determined for the City of Valjevo by using a realistic population distribution model as a source for elements at risk. The results show the distribution of risk and suggest that 20% of the inhabited area falls into the high risk class, but this encompasses less than 5% of the total population.