Landslide Typology Using a Morphological Approach and Establishment of an Inventory Map Based on Aerial Photo Interpretation in Central Vietnam

Abstract

Landslides are destructive and annually recurring phenomena which cause substantial property damage, disruption of traffic and fatalities along transport arteries in the central provinces of Vietnam. The production of a landslide inventory map is a very important preliminary step to determine landslide susceptibility, hazard, and risk assessment. There are a number of methods for producing landslide inventory maps, such as geomorphological field mapping and visual interpretation of stereoscopic aerial photographs. The exact choice of method depends on the quality of collected data, type of data, purpose of the map, map scale and availability of aerial photographs etc. In this paper, visual interpretation of stereoscopic aerial photography is used to prepare an inventory map because of the type of data collected on landslide occurrence. These features are clearly discernible in terms of morphological features that manifest as changes in the form, shape and appearance of the topographic surface. Most of these features can be recognized and appropriately classified through the interpretation of aerial photographs. 523 landslides are identified and based on these features were classified into five categories as follows: (i) rotational slide, (ii) translational slide, (iii) compound slide, (iv) debris slide and, (v) debris flow.