Current Research

A Decade of the Global Landslide Catalog

Landslide events result in casualties and property damage that negatively impact livelihoods and economies across the globe. NASA’s Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) compiles a record of rainfall-triggered landslide events from media reports, academic articles, and existing databases at global scale. The database consists of all types of mass movement events that are triggered by rainfall and represents a minimum number of events occurring between 2007 – 2017. Each recorded event is described by nominal location information, date and time of occurrence, triggering factor, event type, relative size of event, casualties, economic impact, and the geographic location in latitude and longitude with a measure of location accuracy in km. My research evaluates the database and discusses its potential applications and limitations. The evaluation includes an analysis of the spatial and temporal distribution of global landslide events in the GLC. This database has been cited in several research studies where it has been used to estimate landslide hotspots, evaluate geographic patterns in landslides, and train and validate landslide models from local to global scale. Additionally, I evaluate the relationship between the country GDP and landslide occurrence and impacts is assessed to determine the correlation between economic status and landslide hazard. My project also explores anthropogenic impacts that may cause or exacerbate the conditions for landslide activity such as road construction, mining, and undercutting of slopes to influence slope stability and lead to landslides. This project also assesses the patterns in human activities and other contributing factors besides rainfall that cause landslide events in the GLC. The general goal of this project is to show how the GLC can be used for landslide prediction and modeling and to address the biases and limitations of this database.