A Geographical Information System (GIS) Based Probabilistic Certainty Factor Approach in Assessing Landslide Susceptibility: The Case Study of Kimi, Euboea, Greece

Landslides are referred to as unexpected and unpredictable movements usually on unstable surface layers making them one of the most frequent natural hazards with significant social-economic consequences and human losses. Understanding and dealing with landslide hazards requires geographically-referenced data that may vary in scale, resolution, reliability and come from a different set of sources. These raw spatial data needs to be organized and processed in order to support decision making and produce information for further study. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is a set of tools and techniques that manage data and information by overlaying, quantifying, synthesizing them. The present paper considers the development and use of a GIS based Probabilistic Certainty Factor method to assess the geo-environmental parameters that influence the manifestation of landslide phenomena in order to produce a landslide susceptibility map, in the area of Kimi, Euboea, Greece. Certainty Factor method was implemented to evaluate the interaction between these parameters and the landslide occurrence, in order to highlight their contribution to landslide susceptibility.