Landslide databases in the Geological Surveys of Europe

Abstract

Landslides are one of the most widespread geohazards in Europe, producing significant social and economic impacts. Rapid population growth in urban areas throughout many countries in Europe and extreme climatic scenarios can considerably increase landslide risk in the near future. Variability exists between European countries in both the statutory treatment of landslide risk and the use of official assessment guidelines. This suggests that a European Landslides Directive that provides a common legal framework for dealing with landslides is necessary. With this long-term goal in mind, this work analyzes the landslide databases from the Geological Surveys of Europe focusing on their interoperability and completeness. The same landslide classification could be used for the 849,543 landslide records from the Geological Surveys, from which 36% are slides, 10% are falls, 20% are flows, 11% are complex slides, and 24% either remain unclassified or correspond to another typology. Most of them are mapped with the same symbol at a scale of 1:25,000 or greater, providing the necessary information to elaborate European-scale susceptibility maps for each landslide type. A landslide density map was produced for the available records from the Geological Surveys (LANDEN map) showing, for the first time, 210,544km 2 landslide-prone areas and 23,681 administrative areas where the Geological Surveys from Europe have recorded landslides. The comparison of this map with the European landslide susceptibility map (ELSUS 1000 v1) is successful for most of the territory (69.7%) showing certain variability between countries. This comparison also permitted the identification of 0.98Mkm 2 (28.9%) of landslide-susceptible areas without records from the Geological Surveys, which have been used to evaluate the landslide database completeness. The estimated completeness of the landslide databases (LDBs) from the Geological Surveys is 17%, varying between 1 and 55%. This variability is due to the different landslide strategies adopted by each country. In some of them, landslide mapping is systematic; others only record damaging landslides, whereas in others, landslide maps are only available for certain regions or local areas. Moreover, in most of the countries, LDBs from the Geological Surveys co-exist with others owned by a variety of public institutions producing LDBs at variable scales and formats. Hence, a greater coordination effort should be made by all the institutions working in landslide mapping to increase data integration and harmonization.

Persistent Scatterers continuous streaming for landslide monitoring and mapping: the case of the Tuscany region (Italy)

“…In April 2018, also the Valle d'Aosta Region started monitoring its territory adopting an approach similar to Tuscany (Solari et al 2019). Outputs of this monitoring systems may seed future European activities, such as the scheduled European-wide Copernicus Ground Motion Service (EGMS), treasuring thematic information already available, such as the landslide database compiled by Herrera et al (2018). Finally, experiences and protocols resulting from the current activity may enrich the web-based platforms and collaborative projects, such as the Geohazard Exploitation Platform (GEP) (Galve et al 2017).…”

Pan-European landslide susceptibility mapping: ELSUS Version 2

“…The updated landslide data set is summarized in Table 1. No landslide locations for ELSUS are available in the North and Northeast (Iceland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland) and the Southeast of Europe (Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia), even though regional or national-level inventories do exist in some of these countries (Herrera et al, 2017;.…”

Multisource data integration to investigate one century of evolution for the Agnone landslide (Molise, southern Italy)

“…This affirmation is supported by several data sets showing the events and people involved in landslide occurrences as well as the economic and social consequences and the damage to structures and infrastructure (Schuster and Highland 2001;Kjekstad and Highland 2009;Del Soldato et al 2017). The Italian Landslides Database includes up to 528.903 landslides in Italy, which is the European country with the highest density of landslides (the landslide area represents 7.3% of the territory) (Herrera et al 2018). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, more than 1400 landslides occurred at approximately 1200 different sites in Italy (Salvati et al 2015).…”

“…Landslides are one of the most important and widespread natural hazards affecting the Italian territory (Herrera et al 2018), partially due to climate change with serious effects on the environment and geomorphology (Crozier 2010). This affirmation is supported by several data sets showing the events and people involved in landslide occurrences as well as the economic and social consequences and the damage to structures and infrastructure (Schuster and Highland 2001;Kjekstad and Highland 2009;Del Soldato et al 2017).…”