Spatial Pattern of Socio-economic Landslide Vulnerability and its ...

4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION
4.1. Central Tendency and Spatial Pattern of Socio-economic Landslide Vulnerability
Since the nature of people, social structure and culture of Kayangan Catchment were less influenced by
the development of technology and modernization, the natural feature would more dominantly influence the
way of life of the people in Kayangan Catchment. The area preference of building settlement was one
example of social behavior mainly influenced by natural feature and condition. There were several options
for a household to build a settlement, but there was limited option for low income household. Settlement
type was often a reflection of welfare level. It was usually that low income household could not choose
whether they would build their house in more gentle or steep topography. Therefore, low income household
tend to build settlement based on their land given from their parent or ancestor. It was usually located in
steeper, more remote and low accessibility. For high income household, there were several options to build a
settlement. They usually build a settlement in relatively gentle topography and have good accessibility. Good
accessibility was the most common reason where they would build a settlement. Even, with the reason of
accessibility, they would build a settlement by excavating and cutting the slope into more gentle topography.
Low income household living in low accessibility and hilly area had low economic ability of household
to refinance the impact of natural disaster. They usually depend on the agricultural product and have low
education level. Besides living in hilly area which was more prone to be landsliding, they also had high
socio-economic vulnerability level. There were interlinked between natural feature, social behavior,
economic level and vulnerability level. It would affect the spatial pattern of settlement in Kayangan
Catchment.
Figure 2 Sampling Distribution, Mean Center, Standard Distance (Left)
and Directional Distribution (Right) of Socio-economic Vulnerability
Spatial mean center (SMC) provides an analysis where a phenomenon tends to be centered. Figure 2
shows sampling location of socio-economic vulnerability level and their spatial mean centers. It is interesting
to note that low vulnerability SMC tends to be located in the lower stream of Kayangan Catchment which
has more gentle topography and nearby the center of trade, education and local government office location.
In the other hand, the SMCs of medium and high level of vulnerability tend to be located in the upper part of
Kayangan Catchment which has steeper topography. It means that socio-economic vulnerability is spatially
associated with topography and socio-economic functional unit.
Standard distance (SD) was employed to measure the distribution of socio-economic vulnerability
deviate from their SMC. Figure 2 (left) shows the spatial SD circle of socio-economic vulnerability. The low
vulnerability level was the highest deviation from the spatial mean and the high vulnerability level was the
lowest one. However, high vulnerability and medium vulnerability had no significance difference. It implied
that low vulnerability level locations were highly dispersed. High and medium vulnerability levels were not
so much deviated from their mean centre. High and medium vulnerability levels were mainly located on the
hilly area and the boundary of deviation was not exceeding the hilly area of Kayangan Catchment.
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