A Comprehensive Method for the Risk Assessment of Ground Fissures: A Case Study of the Eastern Weihe Basin

Ground fissures are influenced by the coupling of geological factors and human activities. They threaten the safety of infrastructure and restrict town planning in many areas in China. One of the area most severely affected by ground fissures is the Weihe Basin in North China, which has the most extensive distribution of ground fissures and all the elements that control their occurrence, providing an ideal study area for the study of ground fissures. In this study, we took the eastern Weihe Basin as the study area and determined the distribution and hazard characteristics of ground fissures via field investigation. Based on the analytic hierarchy process, we propose a multi-level, comprehensive method for evaluating the hazards of ground fissures. This method considers the geological background, development status, and triggering factors of ground fissures, including all nine currently known assessment indices of ground fissures. We used judgment matrices to rank the constructed ground fissure assessment index system at the single and total levels and quantified the nine assessment indices of ground fissures according to the field survey data. Finally, we plotted the ground fissure risk zoning map and evaluated the ground fissure risk at the study area. Our findings indicated that the proposed method could facilitate ground fissure hazard assessment and prediction and provide support for hazard prevention and urban/rural planning.