MAUP in Estimating Landslide Susceptibility based on GIS

Landslides are one of the main disasters and there are about 48 fatalities every year during past 16 years in the Republic of Korea. It is important to estimate the potential hazard area and diminish the loss of lives and properties. The GIS technology has been widely used for identifying possible landslide hazard zone as to its efficiency and applicability. MAUP(Modifiable Areal Unit Problem) is a common problem in analyses based on GIS and has to be considered in spatial modeling. MAUP has two effects, the scaling effect and the zoning effect. The purpose of this study is to analyze the MAUP effects of landslide susceptibililty modelling based on GIS and find to optimal grid cell size in the study area, Hantan River basin in Korea. 10 spatial factors in the study area were used to estimate landslide hazard zone, such as, geological features, soil type, vegetation type, slopeness, aspect, elevation, and so on. As a result, the quantification and analysis of the MAUP effects by different grid cell size is achieved in the study area.