Geohazards and risk assessment along highway in Sichuan Province, China

Geohazards along highways are the main natural hazards that could affect the safety and operation of highway systems. Understanding the risks faced by highways in areas affected by geohazards is an urgent problem to be solved. This study used historical geohazard events from Sichuan Province and highway network data to propose a geohazard risk index that reflects the risk geohazards along highways. Furthermore, this work applied the entropy method and expert scoring to calculate the weight of the index. The spatial distributions of landslides, debris flows, collapses, and unstable slopes along the highways were analysed based on ArcGIS spatial statistics, and the highway geohazard intensity index were obtained. The relationships between slope, rainfall, vegetation coverage, rock type, land use, and incision depth with geohazards were analysed, and the highway geohazard susceptibility index was calculated by the weighted information method. Based on the intensity and susceptibility index, we obtained a geohazard risk index which can better evaluate the risk of highways, and made a highway geohazard risk map to aid the prevention and mitigation of geohazards along highways and assist with highway network planning.