14 July 2010
Fatal landslides in 2010: a half term report
Posted by Dave Petley
Long term readers of this blog will know that one of its original purposes was to disseminate the work that I do collating data on fatal landslides worldwide. As the Attabad situation reduces in its intensity I plan to return to some of those key themes. So here is a half term report on the occurrence of fatal landslides in 2010.
Numbers of landslides:
As of the end of 30th June I had recorded a total of 235 fatal landslide events worldwide, with a distribution by month that looks like this:
This is the highest number of fatal slides for the first six months of the year that I have recorded to date (i.e. since 2003). In comparison, this graph shows the cumulative total number of fatal landslides for 2010, for 2009 (the previous record) and on average across 2003-2009:
So clearly the number of landslides is running well ahead of the norm for the end of June (remember that globally the main landslide season is in July to September due to the effects of the Asian monsoon. It is not clear why this should be the case, but it may be associated with the transition from El Nino to La Nina conditions.
Loss of life:
The number of recorded fatalities is 2,168, with the monthly distribution looking like this:
Again, this is much higher than for an average year, as the cumulative total plot demonstrates. Note that the previous highest year was 2006 in this case – 2010 is just below this total, but has shown a consistent trend throughout:
Largest events:
The largest event in terms of recorded numbers of fatalities was the 2nd March 2010 landslide at Nametsi Village, Bududa in Uganda, which killed 358 people. However, the numbers killed by landslides in the Haiti earthquake remains unknown.
Worst affected countries:
The top ten countries in terms of numbers of fatalities is as follows:
| 1 | China | 467 |
| 2 | Uganda | 373 |
| 3 | Brazil | 334 |
| 4 | Guatemala | 184 |
| 5 | Indonesia | 118 |
| 6 | Peru | 103 |
| 7 | India | 90 |
| 8 | Pakistan | 61 |
| 9 | Bangladesh | 55 |
| 10 | Kenya | 23 |
Given the high level of landsliding so far this year, the next few months will be interesting.
Dave Petley is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull in the United Kingdom. His blog provides commentary and analysis of landslide events occurring worldwide, including the landslides themselves, latest research, and conferences and meetings.
The information is very interesting.BUT it raises few questions:1) with such high frequency of landslides and casualties (both loss of life and I assume property) why is global civil society not paying increasing attention to this natural disaster?2) Why is so little information available about landslides say as compared to earthquakes?.3) Why is UNISDR not paying more attention to landslides?4) Why not have global conference on landslides and avalanches and mitigation measures?.I feel there is urgent need.5)why is there so little research in academic world on landslide and avalanches ( I may stand corrected) and why so few universities offer specialised degrees in landslides?.6) Why not have a dedicated website housing information about landslides and mitigation measures and lessons learned.AND please keep on your solid quality reporting on Attabad
Maybe increase in number of casualties is caused by that you collect more data than in previous year(s)?
Where do you collect the data from? Is a uniform definition of landslide applied? How do you know that all landslides are included?By the way, how small is the smallest possible landslide?
Tropical, there is no lower limit on landslide size really, although it depends on how you define that term. But below the point where they are capable of actually causing damages, they will typically not be reported except maybe in a study of erosion rates or something like that.The statistics only include landslides that have caused loss of life, not all landslides. There is no way to know for sure if all have been reported; probably not. But with the modern global information network, I imagine most are reported. Although I am also interested in the contribution that better communications and reporting could have made to the increasing number of fatal landslides recorded.
[…] located on the border between Kenya and Uganda. This is an area that was heavily affected by landslides on 1st March last year, resulting in 358 fatalities (see a description of this event, with images, here). There is some […]