Abstract
When a life-threatening landslide is recognized, the questions most relevant to community leaders are as follows: is our community safe enough, and if not, how much should we spend on protection? A risk evaluation tool that helps answer these questions, which compares landslide risk faced by a group of people to perceptions of tolerable risk, was first proposed in Hong Kong and is now being used widely in Western Canada within a quantitative risk management framework. After more than a decade of sporadic application in Western Canada, challenges of applying this tool are becoming apparent. For example, its use has resulted in landslide mitigation designs that are unaffordable, and it has failed to persuade funding authorities that proposed risk management solutions are a justifiable allocation of governments’ limited resources. This article suggests that the risk evaluation tool designed in Hong Kong should not be universally applied. We propose modifications believed to be more appropriate for Western Canada, including tolerating landslide risk levels similar to other natural hazard types and emphasizing cost-effectiveness of landslide risk reduction options. Although the proposed tools were developed for the sociopolitical context of Western Canada, we hope the discussions included in this article motivate others to modify these risk evaluation tools for other societies and hazard types and that ultimately this will lead to more rational and consistent decisions that, with time, save lives and resources in landslide-prone regions of the world.
Published Version
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