Landslide Susceptibility Assessment Using Quantitative Methods - Case Study in Satu Mare County, Romania

Following abundant rainfall of autumn 2008 and the snow melting in the spring of 2009, land instability increased, leading to reactivation of landslides and the activation of new ones, some of them large and with significant damage. Besides the high intensity of the rainfall, geological structure, hidro-geological conditions and anthropogenic factor are the main causes for the occurrence of landslides. Mapping these phenomena became an important task for the future development of the studying area, because the industrial development of this area depends on the infrastructure. Using different types of maps, for different causative factors, quantitative methods of landslide susceptibility assessment and GIS software, we can create different maps for two different methods of evaluation (logistic regression and a bivariate approach using Weight of Evidence and compare them. Based on the observations from both approaches to evaluation, logistic regression was considered the better model, and was thus presented as the final landslide susceptibility map for the study area.