EAGER: A Platform for Regional-Scale Landslide Risk Assessment

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

A number of geologic hazard policy initiatives have been proposed in response to the deadly 2014 Oso, Washington Landslide. Implementing these policies poses considerable and still unresolved practical and scientific challenges, and currently in the U.S., there are no well-established, systematic procedures for developing landslide maps. Moreover, when they exist, these maps typically consider only landslide hazard (location and/or likelihood of occurrence) rather than risk (the consequence of the hazard occurring), which is more meaningful to stakeholders and communities. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award supports the development of a computational platform to enable low-cost, high-resolution regional-scale landslide risk mapping. International collaboration with the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS Science), New Zealand, is a central part of the research, which will capitalize on an unprecedented dataset that was developed during the Christchurch Earthquake sequence, and extreme precipitation events that followed. The research will help guide and inform public policies and have important implications for the safety of individuals living in landslide-prone areas. The key product of this research will be a new framework and computational geo-spatial platform for landslide risk assessment. The research team will develop a terrain-based scheme to assess slope stability using mode-specific landslide models, which will be validated against a comprehensive database of earthquake- and precipitation-induced landslides from New Zealand. The slope hazard models will then be used with landslide damage and fatality fragility relationships to map the landslide risks. In the final stage of work, pilot regional-scale landslide assessment will be conducted for two test sites located in the northwestern U.S. and in New Zealand. These pilot studies will present real-world applications of the platform in different geologic, geomorphic and land-use settings, and serve to guide landslide risk assessments in other locations.