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Evaluating the susceptibility of landslide landforms in Japan using slope stability analysis: a case study of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake

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Abstract

This study analyzed 267 landslide landforms (LLs) in the Kumamoto area of Japan from the database of about 0.4 million LLs for the whole of Japan identified from aerial photos by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience of Japan (NIED). Each LL in the inventory is composed of a scarp and a moving mass. Since landslides are prone to reactivation, it is important to evaluate the sliding-recurrence susceptibility of LLs. One possible approach to evaluate the susceptibility of LLs is slope stability analysis. A previous study found a good correlation (R 2 = 0.99) between the safety factor (F s ) and slope angle (α) of F s  = 17.3α −0.843. We applied the equation to the analysis of F s for 267 LLs in the area affected by the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake (M j  = 7.3). The F s was calculated for the following three cases of failure: scarps only, moving mass only, and scarps and moving mass together. Verification with the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake event shows that the most appropriate method for the evaluation of LLs is to consider the failure of scarps and moving mass together. In addition, by analyzing the relationship between the factors of slope of entire landslide and slope of scarp for LLs and comparing the results with the Aso-ohashi landslide, the largest landslide caused by the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake, we also found that morphometric analysis of LLs is useful for forecasting the travel distance of future landslides.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Storm, Flood, and Landslide Research Department, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience of Japan (NIED), for providing the landslide data of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction, 5 No. 200, Beixin Road Sec. 3, Xindin District, New Taipei City, Taiwan

    Chi-Wen Chen & Hongey Chen

  2. Center for Spatial Information Science, University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha Kashiwa, Chiba, 277-8568, Japan

    Chi-Wen Chen & Tomoyuki Iida

  3. Department of Geosciences, National Taiwan University, No. 1 Roosevelt Road Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan

    Hongey Chen & Lun-Wei Wei

  4. Disaster Prevention Technology Research Center, Sinotech Engineering Consultants, Inc., Taipei, Taiwan

    Lun-Wei Wei

  5. Department of Earth Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, 1 University Road, Tainan City, Taiwan

    Guan-Wei Lin

  6. National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-0006, Japan

    Tomoyuki Iida & Ryuji Yamada

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  1. Chi-Wen Chen
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  2. Hongey Chen
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Correspondence to Chi-Wen Chen.

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Chen, CW., Chen, H., Wei, LW. et al. Evaluating the susceptibility of landslide landforms in Japan using slope stability analysis: a case study of the 2016 Kumamoto earthquake. Landslides 14, 1793–1801 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-017-0872-1

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