SUSCEPTIBILITY MAPPING OF RAINFALL INDUCED LANDSLIDES: A CASE STUDY OF TCHODA MOUNTAIN, CHIRADZULU MALAWI.

Landslides are among one of the greatest destructive hazards which result in a lot of fatalities and financial losses all over the word the world every year. The central objective of this research was to develop a landslide susceptibility map of rainfall induced landslides, a case study of Tchoda mountain Chiradzuru district. Different landslides triggering factors were identified namely aspect, slope angle, elevation, land use/land cover (LULC), lithology, proximity to streams and rainfall which were assessed and processed in a GIS platform to come up different maps that were overlayed to develop a landslide map. Landslide hazardous areas are analyzed and mapped using the landslide occurrence factors through the heuristic approach i.e. Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) to determine how each factor contributes to landslides occurrence. The integration of different landslide causative factors in GIS platform help in identifying susceptible areas that assist in managing land-use planning of susceptible development. The study encountered a number of implications as it relied on a lot of secondary data which was difficult to find. This study showed how value it is to come up with a landslide susceptibility using GIS and RS which could help in managing sustainable highland development by monitoring the hazard susceptibility area.