THE APPLICATION OF GIS AND REMOTE SENSING IN MAPPING SEISMIC MICRO ZONES RISK IN MALAWI (KARONGA)

Earthquakes have been a stumbling bar to development in Malawi's northern region, especially in Karonga. This is a district that is prone to natural disasters. Despite the government's and non-governmental organizations' efforts to mitigate the impact of earthquakes, none of them have been successful. Seismic waves have a variety of consequences, including injuries, human fatalities, property and infrastructure damage, economic losses, and communication disruptions, to name a few.
Earthquake hazard micro-zoning is a relatively new methodology for site selection and infrastructure development investment around the world. It's the way to go when it comes to assessing and integrating multiple interconnected aspects in a GIS context to define specific hazard zones. The number of people killed in an earthquake disaster is mostly determined by the magnitude, depth of the seismicity, and distance of infrastructure / land use from the epicenter, as well as the intensity of the shaking, which is influenced by geomorphology and geological factors. The goal of this research is to create a seismic map for Karonga town by combining historical seismicity datasets with liquefaction potential zones that incorporate land use, geological, and geomorphological elements into the demarcation of degrees of earthquake hazard zones within the study area in GIS and Remote Sensing technologies, with expertise of multicriteria evaluation and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) appraisal. The accessible seismicity data layer, geomorphological, land use, and geological databases are the key data layers considered for the assessment. Several thematic layers were created, with weighting and ordering assigned before normalization. The final seismic hazard zones map was created with ArcGIS 10's raster computed tool. The output hazard zones were then categorized into five levels of hazard: "very high," "high," "moderate," "low," and "very low."