Vol. 11 No.

4 2006 875-881

Article ID. 1007-1202(2006)04-0875-07

Using Fuzzy Relations and GIS Method to

Evaluate Debris Flow Hazard

[ ] SONG Shujun 1'=, ZHANG Baolei 1'=,
FENG Wenlan 1'2 , ZHOU Wancun it
1. Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy
of Sciences,Chengdu 610041 ,Sichuan,China;
2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
100049, China
Abstract= The study area, located in the southeast of Tibet along the
Sichuan-Tibet highway, is a part of Palongzangbu River basin where
mountain hazards take place frequently. On the ground of field surveying,
historical data and previous research, a total of 31 debris flow gullies are
identified in the study area and 5 factors are chosen as main parameters
for evaluating the hazard of debris flows in this study. Spatial analyst
functions of geographic information system (GIS) are utilized to produce
debris flow inventory and parameter maps. All data are built into a spatial
database for evaluating debris flow hazard. Integrated with GIS tech-
niques,the fuzzy relation method is used to calculate the strength of rela-
tionship between debris flow inventory and parameters of the database.
With this methodology,a hazard map of debris flows is produced. Accord-
ing to this m a p , 6 . 6 ~ of the study area is classified as very high hazard,
7.3~ as high hazard,8.4o//00 as moderate hazard,32.1~ as low hazard
and 4 5 . 6 ~ as very low hazard or non-hazard areas. After validating the
results, this methodology is ultimately confirmed to be available.
K e y w o r d s = fuzzy relations; geographic information system ( G I S ) ;
debris flows; hazard evaluation
CLC number= X 43
Received date: 2005-11-20
Foundation item: Supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of Chinese
Academy of Sciences (KZCX2-SW-319-01)
Biography= SONG Shujun (1978-), male, Ph.D. candidate, research direction: ap-
plication and development of geographic information system and remote sensing.
E-mail: fisherssj@ 126. corn
t To whom correspondence should be addressed. Dmail=zhwc@imde. ac. cn
0 Introduction
ebris flows are a kind of common natural phe-
D nomenon with hazard potential in mountainous
areas. They are characteristic of sudden occurrences,
short duration and strongly destructive power. In
China,the majority of debris flows distribute in the
western mountainous area and the fringe o{ plat-
eaus[17. Debris flows in these regions occur frequent-
ly, threaten the safety of life and property and retard
economic development seriously. Therefore, debris
flow hazard assessments have become an important
topic for different disciplines such as administration,
local government, engineering geologists and gee-
morphologists, etc.
For hazard evaluation of natural disaster like
debris flows, many research works have been done
by previous research, and many methods, such as
field geomorphic analysis[el , heuristic approach[a] ,
deterministic or probabilistic modelsc4] , logical ana-
lytical models[~] , bivariate or multivariate statistical
analyses[6'7] , are accordingly produced and summa-
rized. These methods considered for debris flow haz-
ard assessments can be divided into two groups=
qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative
methods,such as geomorphologic mapping, heuristic
approaches, etc., were very popular at the end o{
1970s among the communities of engineering geolo-
gists and geomorphologists, while the quantitative
methods have become popular in the last decades de-
pending on the developments of computer techniques
and the uses of more mathematical models. General-

875
ly, qualitative methods are highly based on personal
knowledge or experience and can be considered mainly as
subjective. Contrary, the quantitative methods, such as
statistical methods (either bivariate or multivariate), de-
terministic models and so forth, can be considered as more
objective due to analyzing the fact that data-based charac-
ter. However, the form mechanism and running process of
debris flows cannot be described quantificationally be-
cause the occurrence of debris flows is extremely complex
in the time and the space. The process of debris flows
with lots of fuzzy phenomena and matters is a nonlinear
and uncertain system. For this character, it is difficult to
evaluate the hazard of debris flows by only using purely
mathematical methods such as analysis of variance, multi-
ple regression analysis, clustering analysis and so forth.
These methods have some characters of limitations and
errors El?. Meanwhile, these methods require the collec-
tion of large amounts of data to produce reliable results.
Therefore,to cope with these problems, some new tech-
niques such as fuzzy logicE~-1~ neural networkE1]'12~,
etc. ,have been successfully applied to assess the hazard
of debris flows in recent years. Utilization of these tech-
niques can be considered as an effective approach to solve
the problems of nonlinearities and uncertainties in the
running process of debris flows when insufficient data ex-
ist statistically or when it is difficult to evaluate the haz-
ard of debris flows by mathematical models.
The geographic information system (GIS) has been
recognized as a strong and useful tool to process, analyze
and display spatial data, and to aid in a decision analysis.
So far GIS technology has been applied to many research
fields by lots of scientists in the world. The GIS-based
approaches are also used widely in analyzing and assess-
Fig. 1 Location map of the study area
876
ing natural hazards such as debris flows E13'142. A GIS
software namely ArcGIS was used to process the data com-
posed of topographical maps and satellite images. These da-
ta were used to produce debris flows distribution map
where a total of 31 debris flow gullies were identified and
to obtain parameter maps for evaluating hazard of debris
flows. Then, a spatial database was built with the debris
flows distribution map and the parameter maps. The fuzzy
relation integrated with GIS methodology was utilized to
make hazard map of debris flow of the study area. The pre-
diction performance of the hazard map was checked by con-
sidering actual debris flows in the study area. In a word,the
purpose of the present work is to discuss and build a new
approach which includes fuzzy relation and GIS methods for
evaluating hazard of debris flows.
1 Study Area
The study area is located between latitude 95033 '
and 97007' N, longitude 29~ and 31003' E, which is in
the middle and upper reaches of Palongzangbu River ba-
sin whose length is 266 km in the southeast part of Tibet
(Fig. 1). The study area crosses Nyingchi and Qamdo re-
gions of Tibet,and from an administrative point of view,
the area belongs to Bomi and Basu counties. The area of
the study region is 5 642.1 km2 and the length is 200. 4
km. The average fall and gradient are 3 360 m and 12.6 ~
respectively. The Sichuan-Tibet highway goes through
the main river of the study area that is disturbed by many
kinds of mountainous disasters such as avalanches,glacier
lake outburst floods, debris flows and landslides, etc.,
wherein the most serious disasters are debris flows and
landslides.