Geospatial Modelling and Mapping of Snow Avalanche Susceptibility

The main objective of this study was to mapping the potential avalanche susceptible zones in Siachen region of the Western Indian Himalaya. A geospatial analytical hierarchy process (AHP) model based on expert judgements has been applied in this study. Five most important terrain based avalanche occurrence parameters including slope, aspect, curvature, elevation and ground cover are employed in the present model. The ASTER GDEM and Landsat 8 OLI imagery are used to generate the avalanche occurrence parameters. A pairwise comparison matrix is computed to estimate the weight values for input terrain parameters. These weight values are then assigned to each respective avalanche occurrence parameter and employed in a geospatial AHP model to generate an avalanche susceptibility map. Finally, an avalanche inventory has been utilized to validate the results. The avalanche susceptibility map has been compared with the avalanche inventory map by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (ROC-AUC) technique.