Investigation on Landslide Stability, using Fractal Dimension, A Case Study of Damavand, Iran

A “landslide” is the movement of a mass of rock, debris, or earth down a slope, under the influence of gravity. Landslides can be sub-aerial and subaqueous, and different phenomena cause landslides, including intense or prolonged rainfall, earthquakes, rapid snow melting, volcanic activity, and multiple human actions. Landslides can involve flowing, sliding, toppling, or falling, and many landslides exhibit a combination of two or more types of movements, at the same time or during the life time of a landslide. In this work, the words “landslide”, “mass movement”, and “slope failure” are used as synonyms (Guzzetti et al, 2006). The planning process in development areas does not usually include measures to reduce hazards, and as a consequence, natural disasters cause needless human suffering and economic losses. From the early stages, planners should assess natural hazards as they prepare investment projects and should promote ways of avoiding or mitigating damage caused by floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural catastrophic events. Adequate planning can minimize damage from these events. It is hoped that familiarizing planners with an approach for incorporating natural hazard management into development planning can improve the planning process in developing countries and thereby reduce the impact of natural hazards. Natural hazard management is the ongoing effort to lessen the impact disasters have on people and property. Fewer people and communities would be affected by natural disasters with the use of this process. Because of the varying degree of each natural disaster, there are different mitigation strategies for each. This is the process of addressing an event that has the potential to seriously disrupt the social fabric of the community. Natural hazard management implies a whole-of-government approach to using community resources to fight the effects of an event and assumes the community will be self-sufficient for periods of time until the situation can be stabilized. Landslides cause damages and harms to human lives. Proper analysis and suitable modeling of these dangers may reduce relative losses. Landslides are abundant and frequent phenomena in many regions of the world, where they threaten private and public properties and human life, with significant socio-economic losses (Bayat et al, 2013). In landslide prone areas, risk mitigation must often face problems related to economic resources, environmental impact and logistic issues. Landslides are globally widespread phenomena, causing a significant number of human loss of life and injury, as well as extensive economic damages to private and public properties. Landslides are present in all continents, and play an important role in the evolution of landscapes. They also represent a serious hazard in many areas of the world. Fractal dimension as an indicator of similarity, density, complexity and frequency seems to be useful for analyzing susceptibility assessment, distribution pattern. It can also be used as a comparable factor. “Fractal dimension” is based on a mathematical theory which describes the quality of complex shape or degree of irregularity (Kubota et al, 2005). Fractals are easy to understand, but sometimes, they seem to be chaotic and very complex