{"id":18673,"date":"2016-05-18T07:55:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T07:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=18673"},"modified":"2016-05-18T12:32:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T12:32:06","slug":"fatal-landslides-in-2016-so-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2016\/05\/18\/fatal-landslides-in-2016-so-far\/","title":{"rendered":"Fatal landslides in 2016 so far"},"content":{"rendered":"
Fatal landslides in 2016 so far<\/h5>\n

As the rainy season starts to loom in the global landslide hotspots of South and South-East Asia, this is a good time to review the global pattern of fatal landslides in 2016 to date.\u00a0 This is data that I have been collecting since 2002 – I wrote it up in a paper (Petley 2016<\/a>) a few years ago – see the blog posts of the time – and Melanie and I are currently working on an update (watch this space).<\/p>\n

So, lets take a look at fatal landslides in 2016 so far.\u00a0 As of yesterday I had recorded 111 landslides that caused loss of life, not including those triggered by earthquakes (does anyone have a full list of fatal landslides from the Japan earthquake last month?).\u00a0 These landslides killed a total of 620 people.\u00a0 This is how the cumulative landslide graph looks, correct to 15th May 2016:<\/p>\n

\"Landslide

Cumulative graph of landslide fatalities in 2016<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This shows a quite normal pattern, with a comparatively slow but steady start to the year, accelerating as time proceeds.\u00a0 As we now come into the northern hemisphere rainy season, the event rate is increasing.\u00a0 This is more dramatic in late June.<\/p>\n

This is the same data plotted together with 2015:<\/p>\n

\"llandslide

Cumulative graph of landslide fatalities in 2016 together with data from 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

In spite of the El Nino event, which is commonly thought to increase landslide occurrence, 2016 looks to be very similar to 2015 in most respects.\u00a0 The number of landslides is a little higher, but not significantly so.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 most of the global losses for 2016 have yet to occur.\u00a0 This is the full dataset for 2015 and 2016 to date:<\/p>\n

\"Fatal

Cumulative graph of fatal landslides in 2016 together with the full dataset for 2015<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The 2015 landslide season in South and East Asia was not strong, which dominates the global pattern.\u00a0 Forecasts for the monsoon suggest that this year might be somewhat worse.<\/p>\n

For the first time I have decided to publish the underlying data online<\/a> (this should open as an Excel spreadsheet).\u00a0 I have started with my data for 2016 so far.\u00a0 You can use this for your own purposes, although I would be grateful if you would:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Acknowledge the source of the data;<\/li>\n
  2. Cite the paper that describes the dataset – Petley (2012)<\/a> – see full reference below.\u00a0 This work is described in a blog post from 2012<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  3. Let me know how you have used it by emailing me directly.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I’d also be glad to know of any errors and omissions.\u00a0 I should note that this data is preliminary at this point – I haven’t done the detailed checking as yet – and I haven’t yet undertaken the geolocation work to allow the landslides to be mapped.<\/p>\n

    Reference<\/h5>\n

    Petley, D.N. 2012. Global patterns of loss of life from landslides<\/a>. Geology<\/em> 40 <\/strong>(10), 927-930.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A review of fatal landslides in 2016 to date suggests that so far the number of events and number of deaths is very similar to 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":18688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[542],"tags":[45,625,806,74,589,469],"class_list":["post-18673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-database-2","tag-database","tag-deaths","tag-fatal","tag-fatalities","tag-fatality-data","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}