Mega cities often receive all the attention when it comes to earthquake risk reduction activities, but what about rural communities living in seismically active areas? As the recent earthquakes in Kashmir, Pakistan and Sichuan, China have shown, rural populations are vulnerable not only to the shaking but also the secondary hazards associated with earthquake events. In this blog post series, Katie Oven and Nick Rosser summarise a scoping study funded by the NERC and ESRC which focuses on rural communities specifically and explores how science and local knowledge can be combined to build resilience at the local level.

Today marks the first anniversary of the A|ttabad landslide in Pakistan. This post reviews both the current situation and the ways in which the anniversary is being marked.

This post features the development of community-based landslide warning systems in less developed countries, using an example by way of an illustration. There is also a short consideration of the current European and US weather in the context of climate change.

Whilst it has dropped from the news during the winter period, the Attabad landslide crisis in Pakistan rumbles on, with dire consequences for the population on the north side of the barrier.  In the next few days the high passes into China will close again, rendering the population of Gojal isolated once again.  The Pamir Times featured an article a few days ago highlighting how tough conditions are once again: …

The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) in Pakistan have now made four reports about Attabad available online here.  These are as follows (with the correct links to each): The dam break study undertaken by NESPAK. A report by Alessandro Palmeiri, from the World Bank My report on the landslide. A report by the Geological Survey of Pakistan dating from before the landslide event about the hazards at the site. Interestingly, …

Ken Hewitt has written a wonderful article for Scientific American entitled “Gifts and Perils of Landslides”, in which he examines the inter-relationship between the development of society and the occurrence of landslides in the Upper Indus valleys.  Ken is the guru of high mountain landslides in Pakistan, having spent many field seasons mapping rock avalanche deposits in the remote upper valleys of the Hindu Kush.  The article is available online …

The end of the month marks the point at which I post the accumulated totals for fatal landslides, based upon the global fatal landslide database that I maintain.  The raw figures for August are stark.  The total number of fatal landslides recorded in the month was 71, resulting in 2,740 fatalities.  This total is of course dominated by the Zhouqu landslide in China, which is reported to have resulted in …

The next few posts will be an attempt to catch up on the things that I missed whilst on vacation in Switzerland last week.  Thanks to the many people who have tipped me off about landslide events.  I will cover Pakistan in another post.1. A large flow in AustriaThanks to Martin Springer for highlighting this one.  On Saturday 21st August a severe storm triggered a 100,000 cubic metre flow in …

You probably guessed that I am on holiday this week (normal service will be resumed at the weekend), but I thought I’d quickly post this new debris flow video from Hunza in Pakistan. The interesting but starts at about 1 minute 15 seconds:

This morning has brought further reports of heavy rain and consequent landslides in China, with more downpours forecast for the next few days.  Meanwhile the recovery operations for the Shouqu landslide continue, marked by a national day of mourning for the victims.  Note that the cost of the landslide at Shouqu is now reported to be 1239 people, with 505 still missing.  The landslides in China this year are interesting …