The occurrence of landslides in mountainous areas of Nepal is recurrent phenomena and this can be disastrous if occurred within human settlements. Proper research is required to manage and reduce the risks of the disaster in places where landslides had occurred frequently. In risk assessment estimation of vulnerability is one major component. This research was aimed to generate information on the vulnerability of people in the Panchase area of central Nepal. The method of analytical hierarchy process was used to define the weightage to be assigned for 4 factors and 26 indicators used in the research. 377 households were surveyed with a questionnaire designed to collect information on those indicators. The households sampled for the survey were made sure that they were near or around the landslide affected area. The response for each indicator was converted into scores which when summed up yielded the vulnerability score. This score for each household was used to categorize households into five levels of vulnerability from very low, low, moderate, high, to very high. The numbers of households in each category were 16, 92, 191, 75, and 3 respectively. Environmental and economic indicators were inflicting higher vulnerability in this research location. Remoteness and lesser number of facilities and/or services, lower numbers of governmental offices, absence of banking and financial institutions, lesser preferences for insurances and savings, degraded natural water sources were major determinants of higher vulnerability in Panchase. These indicators should be prioritized during disaster risk management in Panchase.

Numerous slope failures have been noticed in the Panchase region of central Nepal posing threats to people and biodiversity. Considering the need to reduce landslide risks, this research determined the spatial extent of landslide hazard degrees in the Panchase area. The research site, with an area of 278.324 km 2 , consists of parts of the Kaski, Parbat, and Syangja Districts. A Statistical Index Method was used for hazard analysis that produced weights. Positive weight values for each factor class represented a higher hazard and vice versa. An inventory of the study area identified 556 landslides measuring 1.511 km 2 indicating a landslide density of 2 per km 2 area. Thirteen percent (36.18 km 2) of the total experimental area was rated as a very high hazard zone. Similarly, the area occupied by high hazard and moderate hazard zones were 77.66 km 2 (28%), and 81.83 km 2 (29%) respectively. The validation showed that the method can produce results with of accuracy of 82.8%. This indicated the hazard assessment process is acceptable and replicable. The factor classes having greater influence for higher landslide hazard are: near the streams, near the roads, barren or grassland, land with phyllite bedrocks, land receiving rainfalls greater than 4,000 mm, lands with an elevation range from 1,000 m to 1,500 m, slopes steeper than 30°, and south-facing slope. During risk management work by local authorities, considerations should be given to these factors and areas with higher hazards.

No abstract