The susceptibility assessment of multi-hazard in the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, China

Abstract. The multi-hazard susceptibility assessment can provide a basis to decision-making for land use planning and geo-hazards management. The main scope of this paper is assess multi-hazard susceptibility to identify susceptibility area by using an integrated method of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Difference Method (MD) within MapGIS environment. The basic principle of this method is to predict future geological hazards based on occurrence mechanism of occurred geological hazards and the geological conditions that caused past geological hazards. Typical geo-hazards susceptibility are separately assessed by applying Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The multi-hazard susceptibility is completed by synthesizing individual geo-hazards susceptibility result with the Difference Method (MD), the multi-hazard susceptibility map is generated by utilizing MapGIS platform. The multi-hazard map can provide decision-makers with visual information for geo-hazards management and land use planning, which reduce confusion of decision-makers on high number of individual geo-hazard map. The study area was categorized into high susceptibility zone, moderate susceptibility zone, low susceptibility zone, and insusceptible zone, accounting for 16.5 %, 41.6 %, 33.8 % and 8.1 % of the total study area, respectively. The multi-hazad susceptibility result can be combined with other conditions to provide decision-makers with theoretical basis for geo-hzards management and planning of development.