Abstract: As a special topography, escarpments are one of the important factors causing various geological disasters such as landslides and mudslides. Geological disasters caused by escarpments will destroy man-made surface features and cause serious harm to the safety of human life and property. Based on the DEM data, we extrac the escarpments in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, conduct a systematic study on the range of influence of the escarpments, and construct a potential landslide direction model ofthe escarpments in Wenzhou. We also determine its impact on man-made features (such as roads, houses). The main contents of this study are as follows: ①extracting the escarpments and modeling their potential landslide directions; ②extracting the affected artificial ground features according to the scope of influence and establishing a basic database. The results show that Wenzhou has a large number of escarpments, a wide range of distribution and concentration, and the geological disasters caused by them will have serious potential impacts on man-made surface features. The basic database constructed in this paper can describe the locations of houses and roads potentially affected by escarpments, determine key disaster prevention areas, and serve Wenzhou’s disaster prevention and control work.

Key words: escarpments, geological disaster, basic database, disaster prevention and mitigation, topography and landform