The journal Geology has placed online a paper that I have written detailing the global cost of landslides worldwide.  This is the definitive paper (so far) describing the results of my research over the last decade (I started on 1st September 2002, so am nearly at the tenth anniversary).  Ironically, it is likely that today the total number of  in the database, excluding landslides caused by earthquakes, will reach 40,000.

For copyright reasons I am not allowed to publish the paper online, but the publisher’s website for the paper is here.  I have also placed some resources regarding the paper on our FTP site, and I am allowed to email a copy of the paper to you (so feel free to email me on: d.n.petley@durham.ac.uk.

Anyway, this paper covers the period 2004-2010 (i.e. seven full years), and focuses on landslides caused by non-seismic processes (i.e. earthquakes are excluded).  In that period, I have recorded 32,322 deaths in 2,620 landslides.  This is about an order of magnitude more than previous records had suggested.  The dataset includes a map of the fatalities, which indicates where the global hotspots lie. I have produced a colour version:

There is a high-resolution image of the on the FTP site for you to download as both a TIF and a JPEG.

The global hotspots that emerge for landslides are as follows:

  • Along the southern edge of the Himalayan Arc
  • Along the coast of southwest India and in Sri Lanka
  • Along the southern and eastern coastal regions of China, extending inland ~100 km
  • In central China, most notably in the mountains surrounding the Sichuan Basin
  • In the mountain chains along the western edge of the Philippine Sea plate
  • In the central Caribbean islands
  • In a chain that follows the mountains of Central America and South America from Mexico in the north to northern Chile in the south
  • In Indonesia, most notably in and around the island of Java

Not in the paper, but I have determined the number of landslides occurring in each of the key landslide countries worldwide.  Remember that this data is for non-seismic landslides, and that it covers the period 2004-2010 inclusive:

Country Number of deaths in 2004-2010 Number of landslides in 2004-2010
Afghanistan  67 9
Bangladesh  302 58
Bhutan  50 18
Brazil  823 88
China  6860 353
Colombia  564 68
Dominican Republic  46 10
Ecuador  48 8
El Salvador  197 18
Guatemala  2001 45
Haiti  4475 22
Honduras  52 12
India  2415 393
Indonesia  2078 164
Italy  67 14
Jamaica  20 10
Japan  147 70
Kenya  72 15
Malaysia  53 29
Mexico  318 53
Burma  211 12
Nepal  809 211
Pakistan  1023 102
Papua New Guinea  105 13
Peru  313 29
Philippines  4583 226
Portugal  70 8
South Africa  12 8
South Korea  74 16
Spain  15 12
Sri Lanka  81 21
Taiwan  693 44
Tajikistan  75 16
Thailand  134 20
Turkey  85 22
Uganda  408 15
USA  64 42
Venezuela  63 23
Vietnam  528 76
Yemen  121 9

Media coverage of landslide research:

Landslides ‘kill more than previously thought’. BBC News

Death Toll from Landslides Vastly Underestimated. Nature (and Science)

Landslide fatalities are greater than previously thought. Physorg (includes video of annual cycle of global landslides)

Re-blogged from Dave Petley’s Landslide Blog on the AGU Blogosphere.

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