Landslide Hazard and Risk Management (WCoE 2014–2017)

Abstract

The World Centre of Excellence (WCoE) on Landslide Risk Reduction entitled “Landslide risk assessment and development guidelines for effective risk reduction” (2014–2017) was designed to contribute to the risk reduction effort formulated in the Sendai Partnership initiative. Several research activities were developed and their results were presented to a broad public through a series of articles, informative web pages and documentary movies. The research focused on improving landslide hazard assessment in a variety of natural environments, including deep-seated as well as shallow landslides. Landslide hazard assessment was applied practically through development projects in Ethiopia and Peru. Within the scope of the WCoE we proposed and conducted two projects of the International Program on Landslides (IPL). One of them is dedicated to compilation and analysis of glacial lake outburst floods (Database of glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs)–project No. 179) at the global level. This potentially highly damaging natural phenomenon combines characteristics of floods and debris flows and often also involves landslides in the initiation process. The other IPL project focuses on the main challenges of landslide risk reduction in the Czech Republic (Challenges for landslide hazard and risk management in “low risk” regions, Czech Republic, IPL project No. 197), which is a country with abundant landslide-related knowledge and rather low annual occurrence frequencies. Despite that, landslides cause considerable damage and financial losses, which often could be prevented if the available hazard information were to be used.