Evaluation of landslide susceptibility based on VW-AHP-IV model: a case of Pengyang County, Ningxia H. A. R., China

Landslide is one of the most common and severe geological disasters, which significantly endangers people's lives and properties. Therefore, the evaluation of landslide susceptibility in a specific area is important for disaster control and mitigation. This paper selected Pengyang County as the study area. It divided the indicator state levels, and further assigned a score for each indicator according to the related information values (IV) based on the analysis of graded area ratio and landslide occurrence frequency distribution. Because the solo analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method always causes large errors during the weight determination, a variable-weight based weighted information value (VW-AHP-IV) model was applied in this paper for landslide susceptibility evaluation. The study area was classified into four grades by the natural breakpoint method: high susceptibility area ( 11.80% ), medium susceptibility area ( 29.23% ), low susceptibility area ( 42.45% ) and very low susceptibility area ( 16.52% ). In addition, this paper also discussed the influences of precipitation and human activities. According to the evaluation results and discussion, the study area was classified into three prevention and control areas: focus prevention and control area, sub-focus prevention and control area, and general prevention and control area. For each area, the corresponding prevention and control suggestions were proposed in order to reduce the occurrence of landslide disasters.