Analyzing the dynamics of landslide risk in Cox’s Bazar district: An application of GIS and Remote sensing-based approach

Landslides have become frequent and devastating geospatial disasters globally that cost human lives and GDP growth. Middle and low-economic countries are suffering most from this hazard. Researchers are trying to analyze landslide risk around the world. The southeastern part of Bangladesh also faces landslide hazards regularly. Cox’s Bazars is one of those landslide hazard-prone districts. Very few research has been conducted to analyze the landslide susceptibility of small areas within Cox’s Bazar district. Despite being a major tourist attraction zone and Rohingya habitat still there no research has been conducted to analyze landslide hazard risk all over Cox’s Bazar district. Therefore, the core focus of this research is analyzing the landslide hazard risk for Cox’s Bazar district. The study has mainly adopted a quantitative research strategy for analyzing the risk profile of Cox’s Bazar district. Primarily a deep review of relevant articles is conducted for understanding the hazard exposure, vulnerability, and risk nexus. This review also helped to figure out appropriate factors to calculate risk. Then Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based weight is generated for vulnerability and hazard factors. Afterward, the Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach produced the hazard exposure map from 12 factors and 10 factors vulnerability index values were generated for each union. The hazard map shows that with the increase of elevation, rainfall, slope degree, soil permeability, and decrease of vegetation, distance to fault, road, and river hazard exposure increases. The vulnerability map shows that the union very far from the district center is highly vulnerable. The majority of the unions in Cox’s Bazar districts are moderate to highly vulnerable. Finally, the risk maps are generated by multiplying the hazard and vulnerability maps. The map shows that the middle part of the district is a high-risk zone also the eastern part is moderately risky and the northern part is a low-risk zone. A total of 59% of the district is in moderate to high-risk zones. This study will be crucial for policymakers to make decisions regarding development strategies and plans for disaster risk reduction by exploring the level, extent, and properties of landslide risk at the local level. 

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