The headline figure is that in total (excluding landslides triggered by earthquakes) about 56,000 people were killed by landslides over that period, in about 4,900 distinct landslide events.\u00a0 As expected, the majority of those landslides occurred in less developed countries in Asia, with particular hotspots in for example India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia.\u00a0 We have looked carefully at the time series data as well – the graph below shows the full dataset, organised in five day blocks (pentads):-<\/p>\n
![\"global](\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2018\/08\/18_08-NHESS-1-e1535089425675.jpg\")
Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016 inclusive. Graph from Froude and Petley (2018)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n .<\/p>\n The cumulative trend graph shows that we find no convincing evidence that overall landslide losses are increasing globally.\u00a0 The strong annual cyclicity in the data is evident too, which landslides peaking each year as the Asian summer monsoons generate failures in populated areas.\u00a0 But note that the shape of the annual cycle also varies hugely, presumably in response to variations in rainfall totals and locations.\u00a0 We know that this needs much more investigation, and we are working on it, but we suspect that we will need 30 years of data to understand it properly.\u00a0 The high quality dataset (i.e. from January 2004 onwards) is now 14 years old, and I have 17 years of my career left, so that analysis may be the one that I write as I retire!<\/p>\n I think the most interesting finding in this paper, and the one that goes well beyond anything we have done before, is in the patterns with time of landslides caused by humans.\u00a0 The graph below, from the paper, plots a range of human-induced landslide types with time:-<\/p>\n Global fatal landslide occurrence – losses from human induced mass movements. Graph from Froude and Petley (2018)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n .<\/p>\n In most cases we have recorded an increase in losses with time for landslides triggered by humans.\u00a0 This is particularly the case for mining (especially illegal or unregulated mining) and hill cutting.\u00a0 Our strong sense is that these patterns reflect an increase in these activities in poorer countries, especially in Asia.\u00a0 These landslides are avoidable; they are in every case a tragedy.<\/p>\n I will post again on this early next week, but after considerable work we have been able to get the dataset online.\u00a0 Melanie has set up an ESRI ARCGIS system<\/a> that allows the user to access the data and to generate maps using it.\u00a0 This has been an ambition for a long time, and we hope that it will be useful.<\/p>\n References<\/p>\n Froude, M. J. and Petley, D. N. 2018. Global fatal landslide occurrence from 2004 to 2016<\/a>. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences<\/em>, 18<\/strong>, 2161-2181, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.5194\/nhess-18-2161-2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Global](\"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/files\/2018\/08\/18_08-NHESS-2-e1535090084646.jpg\")