I have still not managed to track down some really good images of the Highway 3 landslide in Taiwan, but for now here are two pictures from the China Post: More later I hope.

A landslide (frana in Italian) occurred this morning at Merano, near to Bolzano in northern Italy, striking a train that was derailed.  Reports suggest that 11 9 people were killed and a further 30 were injured.  This is a Google Earth image of Merano with a railway line marked in black, but I am not sure where the accident occurred or even if it is in this image. Il Giornale …

Within the mainstream media the Attabad landslide story has been on slow burn for a while now, with a bit of interest last week. However, Reuters have run a story on this today that should now see it gaining a higher profile over the next few days: Reuters Story (Key parts only):Authorities in northern Pakistan are struggling to prevent the bursting of a natural dam formed by a landslide that …

Yesterday I gave a talk to the Manchester branches of the Geographical Association and the Geological Association on the causes of the Sichuan (Wenchuan) earthquake disaster. As usual I promised to make my slides available via Authorstream. You should be able to download the presentation as well as viewing it below.: 10_03 Manchester 1 http://www.authorstream.com/player/player.swf?p=346062_634038962411343750 See more presentations by Dr_Dave | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations

In my last post I published two maps of fatal landslide occurrence in the years 2006 to 2008 inclusive, based upon my long term fatal landslide database. In this post I focus on the Asia Pacific region. This analysis does not include seismically-induced landslides, most notably the Wenchuan (Sichuan) earthquake, which triggered a large number of slides, killing over 20,000 people. The basic statistics of the data are in the …

NB there is an alaysis of the data in thiese maps in this post:http://daveslandslideblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/analysis-of-fatal-landslides-in-asia.html I have recently worked up two new maps of the distribution of fatal landslides, based upon the fatal landslide database that I maintain. This first map shows the global distribution of non-seismic landslides for the period 2006-2008. Each dot represents a single fatal landslide. The colours indicate the year: Red = 2008Blue = 2007Green = 2006 …

As we are now at the end of the “noughties” I thought that it would be interesting to compile a list of the ten most important “natural” (i.e. geophysical and hydro-meteorological) disasters of the decade. This is not intended to be a list of the ten most damaging or with the highest number of fatalities, but more to reflect events that changed the way that we think or act about …

As we are now at the end of the “noughties” I thought that it would be interesting to compile a list of the ten most important “natural” (i.e. geophysical and hydro-meteorological) disasters of the decade. This is not intended to be a list of the ten most damaging or with the highest number of fatalities, but more to reflect events that changed the way that we think or act about …

The reinsurance giant Munich Re releases annual statistics on the losses from natural catastrophes each year. They released the data for 2009 yesterday, presumably banking on the balance of probabilities that there would be no more major events in the three days left of the year. The release is available here: http://www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2009/2009_12_29_press_release.aspxOverall resultsThe news for 2009 is good, with no disasters causing mass (i.e. >10,000) fatalities. There list of the …

The reinsurance giant Munich Re releases annual statistics on the losses from natural catastrophes each year. They released the data for 2009 yesterday, presumably banking on the balance of probabilities that there would be no more major events in the three days left of the year. The release is available here: http://www.munichre.com/en/press/press_releases/2009/2009_12_29_press_release.aspxOverall resultsThe news for 2009 is good, with no disasters causing mass (i.e. >10,000) fatalities. There list of the …