Size Matters: The Impact of Small, Medium and Large Landslide Disasters

Owing to the nature of landslide triggering mechanisms, lack of realistic documentation on the impact of landslide disasters at global, national and subnational scales has existed for many years. Data from two sources was used to examine the discrepancies about the impact of landslide disasters by considering both, high magnitude-low frequency and high frequency-low magnitude events. Analysis of this landslide disaster data for thirteen countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nepal, Nicaragua, Peru, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela) revealed larger differences than those previously reported. Variation among number of landslide disasters between databases was expressed in three orders of magnitude, whereas number of human losses differed in two orders of magnitude, and people affected in one.