Landslide Hazard Investigation in Papua New Guinea-A Remote Sensing & GIS Approach

Tribal communities living in the mountainous regions of Papua New Guinea (PNG), often experience frequent landslides during the rainy season. The Eastern Highlands Province (EHP) is one such landslide prone province located in the mountain regions of PNG. Landslide is classified as a natural hazard that has a critical geological process to inflict an enormous damage to civil engineering structures including other valuable assets. The research study was aimed to monitor and assess landslide hazards by remote sensing data processing and GIS spatial analysis. The occurrence of landslide is controlled by a number of morphological, geological and human factors. However, according to the availability of data, only certain principal factors are considered in the present study. The analysis focuses certain landslide contributing factors in generating landslide hazard map of the area. For this study, ranking, classification and weighted overlay analysis techniques were commonly used to generate landslide hazard map.