Landslide risk mapping and development of landslide database and mobile app for Bhutan

Mr Thongley Thongley
Jigme Namgyel Engineering College
Mr Younten Tshering
Dewathang Royal University of Bhutan

Research problem: No landslide risk map covering the entire Bhutan nor a landslide database to upload or download time series landslide data to monitor landslides in Bhutan.

Innovation/novelty: The landslide map and landslide database in a mobile app is new research in Bhutan. The user can locate their location in the app and its landslide zone. Similarly, any person can upload landslide information to the database and download landslide information from the database through the BLI app.

Proposed solution: To Develop a mobile app named “Bhutan Landslides Information” (BLI). This app will be used to upload the landslide risk map for Bhutan. The mobile app will also store the landslide information in a database with attributes such as date, spatial location, and photographs.

Research Methodology: The workflow consists of three parts, namely, landslide risk mapping, database design, and mobile app development. The landslide risk mapping will be generated using logistic regression. The database will be designed based on the requirements and stored in MySQL. For development, the Rapid Application Development Model will be followed.

Practical application and implications:  The digital landslide risk map can be viewed by any user through the mobile app. The most expected users are decision-makers and engineers. Similarly, researchers can download landslide data through the database, while ordinary people can upload landslide information to the database.

Assumptions: The landslide risk map will be developed based on the principle “past and present to future”, which means the predicted landslide map will be trained using past and present landslides.

Scope and limitations: Entire Bhutan will be included in the study for landslide risk mapping and landslide database; the limitation of the study is that future time series landslide prediction is not included in the study.