## 1 Introduction
The natural risks referred to in the law include earthquakes, floods, and landslides. The importance of risk studies at county level derives from this law, which states that the declaration of an area as a natural risk area is made by decision of the county council on the basis of natural risk maps approved according to para. (Art. 2). County councils may also apply for funding from the state budget for the execution of natural risk maps and natural risk prevention and mitigation works. Annex 6 also provides two maps at national level showing the potential for landslides and the type of landslides [26]. Unfortunately, this law is outdated at present, as it has not been updated; the general recommendation is that natural risks should be analyzed in every local planning document. Hence the importance of risk studies, which are designed to provide a current picture of landslides. Although Law 575 of 2001 was the first mapping of the UATs affected by landslides, subsequent studies have detailed and represented at national level the areas subject to landslides [19; 27; 28]. The importance of studies at the national level is to provide a basis for public authorities in making decisions on the routing of major roads or utility infrastructure [28]. At the national level, there are policies that regulate how to manage risk processes. Romania's Territorial Development Strategy is the long-term programmatic document that outlines the development directions of the national territory for horizon 2035. Thisdocument also underpins the entire national spatial planning system and is the basis for strategic documents at regional, county, and local level (territorial development strategies, spatial planning plans, regional development plans, urban development plans), as well as other development strategies at national level with territorial relevance and impact [29]. The territorial diagnosis mentions landslides as processes occurring in hilly and lowland areas, one of the causes being massive deforestation. Strengthening measures to protect the natural environment against risks is one of the specific objectives under general objective 4 (protecting natural and built heritage and enhancing the elements of territorial identity), and it proposes protecting heritage and promoting measures to regenerate natural capital. Specific objective 4.3 (reducing the vulnerability of areas subject to natural risks) also proposes the priority rehabilitation of areas with high vulnerability to natural risks (floods, landslides). The next territorial level at which natural hazard policies exist is the development region. At the level of the North-West Region, a Development Plan for the period 2021-2027 has been prepared, which includes information related to landslides, and 192 administrative territorial units have been identified where landslides could occur. A high potential for landslides characterizes a share of 45% of the total 192 TAUs, and together with the medium-risk potential, this share increases to 60%. Compared to the situation highlighted in Law no. 575/October 2001 [26], there has been a lack of updates to the landslide database, resulting in the need to map risk areas [30]. Landslides have also been analyzed for various purposes concerning spatial planning issues: assessment of land vulnerability to risk processes in urban development [31], impact of land use change on landslide susceptibility [25], assessment of geo-hazards for increasing resilience at the local level [14], landslide management in the urban environment [32], and analysis of how landslides are integrated into spatial planning policies at the European level [13]. One of the objectives of this paper was to use GIS technology to identify the probability of landslide occurrence using a semi-quantitative model, which allows for the classification of different territories across Romania according to classes of landslide occurrence probability. This methodology has been enforced in Romania through Government Decision no. 447/2003 [33].