Brief communication: Weak correlation between building damage and loss of life from landslides

Abstract. Mapping exposure to landslides is necessary to mitigate risk and increase resilience. Exposure maps can be constructed from building databases, akin to seismic risk assessments, but there has been little investigation of the predictive relationship between building damage from landslides and risk to human life. Our study investigates this relationship globally and in Nepal (47 213 and 5664 landslides, respectively). While a correlation exists for nationwide totals (R2 = 0.75), it is negligible for individual events (R2 = 0.025). It is important to not construct landslide exposure maps from building datasets alone, else building damage may be inadvertently prioritised over human lives in disaster planning.

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Publication Details

Journal
Natural hazards and earth system sciences
Published
2025-06-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-1937-2025
Primary Topic
Landslides and related hazards
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Brief communication: Weak correlation between building damage and loss of life from landslides

Nick Rosser, Katie J. Oven, Simon Dadson, Amy L. Johnson et al.
Natural hazards and earth system sciences
Landslides and related hazards
article

Brief communication: Weak correlation between building damage and loss of life from landslides

Nick Rosser, Katie J. Oven, Simon Dadson, Amy L. Johnson, Mark Kincey, Alexander Logan Densmore, Tek Bahadur Dong, Erin L. Harvey, Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries, Katherine Arrell, Jeevan Baniya, Alexandre Dunant, Nyima Dorjee Bhotia, Anuradha Puri, Dipak Basnet, Sihan Li, Gopi Krishna Basyal
article en

Abstract

Abstract. Mapping exposure to landslides is necessary to mitigate risk and increase resilience. Exposure maps can be constructed from building databases, akin to seismic risk assessments, but there has been little investigation of the predictive relationship between building damage from landslides and risk to human life. Our study investigates this relationship globally and in Nepal (47 213 and 5664 landslides, respectively). While a correlation exists for nationwide totals (R2 = 0.75), it is negligible for individual events (R2 = 0.025). It is important to not construct landslide exposure maps from building datasets alone, else building damage may be inadvertently prioritised over human lives in disaster planning.

Natural hazards and earth system sciencesVol. 25(6)
Eurac Research (IT), Georgia College & State University (US), Durham University (GB), Northumbria University (GB), University of Oxford (GB), Social Science Baha (NP), National Society for Earthquake Technology (NP), Newcastle University (GB), University of Sheffield (GB)
UK Research and Innovation
Openalex Percentile: Top 81%
Landslides and related hazards
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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