Impact of Rainfall-Induced Landslide Susceptibility Risk on Mountain Roadside in Northern Thailand

Abstract

Landslide incidents frequently occur in the upper northern region of Thailand due to its topography, which is mostly mountainous with high slopes. In the past, when landslides happened in this area, they affected traffic accessibility for rescue and evacuation. For this reason, if the risk of landslides could be evaluated, it would help in the planning of preventive measures to mitigate the damage. This study was carried out to create and develop a risk estimation model using the artificial neural network (ANN) technique for landslides at the edge of the roadside, by collecting field data on past landslides in the study areas in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai Provinces. A total of 9602 data points were collected. The variables for forecasting were: (1) land cover, (2) physiographic features, (3) slope angle, and (4) five-day cumulative rainfall. Two hidden layers were used to create the model. The number of nodes in the first and second hidden layers were five and one, respectively, which were derived from a total of 25 trials, and the highest accuracy achieved was 96.74%. When applying the model, a graph demonstrating the relationship between the landslide risk, rainfall, and the slopes of the road areas was obtained. The results show that high slopes result in more landslides than low slopes, and that rainfall is a major trigger for landslides on roads. The outcomes of the study could be used to create risk maps and provide information for developing warnings for high-slope mountain roads in the upper northern region of Thailand.