Abstract
Landslide inventories are used for multiple purposes including landscape characterisation and monitoring, and landslide susceptibility, hazard and risk evaluation. Their quality can depend on the data and the methods with which they were produced. In this work we evaluate the effects of a variable visibility of the territory to map on the spatial distribution of the information collected by four landslide inventories prepared using different approaches in two study areas. The method first classifies the territory in areas with different visibility levels from the paths (roads) used to map landslides, and then estimates the landslide density reported in the inventories into the different visibility classes. Our results show that 1) the density of the information is strongly related to the visibility in inventories obtained through fieldwork, technical reports and/or newspapers, where landslides are under-sampled in low visibility classes; and 2) the inventories obtained by photo-interpretation of images suffer from a marked under representation of small landslides close to roads or infrastructures. We maintain that the proposed procedure can be useful to evaluate the quality of landslide inventories and then properly orient their use.
Highlights
Landslides affect the evolution of the territory and represent a hazard to the population, structures and infrastructure (Fell et al, 2008)
Our results show that 1) the density of the information is strongly related to the visibility in inventories obtained through 15 fieldwork, technical reports and/or newspapers, where landslides are under-sampled in low visibility classes; and 2) the inventories obtained by photo-interpretation of images suffer from a marked under representation of small landslides close to roads or infrastructures
We analysed the relationship between the spatial density of landslides reported in different inventories prepared through field surveys, collection of previous data and interpretation of remotely acquired images, and the visibility of the territory from observation points located along the roads
Summary
Landslides affect the evolution of the territory and represent a hazard to the population, structures and infrastructure (Fell et al, 2008). Detailed information about the spatial and temporal distribution, and characteristics of past landslides is essential for susceptibility/hazard statistical (Hao et al, 2020; Reichenbach et al, 2018; Steger et al, 2016; Van Den Eeckhaut and Hervás, 2012) and physically-based modelling (Lee et al, 2020; Park et al, 2019). 25 Complete landslide inventories are difficult or impossible to achieve (Corominas et al, 2014) and when they are used, they should at least be statistically representative of the slope processes occurring in the studied area (Cova et al, 2018; Guzzetti et al, 2012; Melzner et al, 2020). Bias in sampling can prevent the realization of statistically representative inventories and introduce errors that are difficult to manage, propagate and communicate (Guzzetti et al, 1999).
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