Landslide Databases in Europe: Analysis and Recommendations for Interoperability and Harmonisation

Landslide inventories, usually including digital inventory maps and linked alphanumeric attributes, are the most important input for further landslide zoning. However, to allow landslide susceptibility, hazard and risk assessment the inventory databases should contain information on the location of landslide phenomena, types, history, state of activity, magnitude or size, causal factors and the damage caused. Yet, in Europe it is not known which national (or regional) landslide databases contain all this information, and thus allow landslide risk assessment. Therefore this study presents a review of existing national landslide databases in Europe together with a number of regional databases, and proposes improvements in agreement with the EU Soil Thematic Strategy, and with INSPIRE Directive.

Replies received to a detailed questionnaire learned that currently 22 out of 37 contacted European countries have a national landslide database. Six other countries only have regional databases. In total the databases contain so far more than 642,000 landslides. About half of the databases contain less than 50% of all landslides in the country and also information on landslide history, triggering factor and consequences is generally only available for less than 25% of the landslides in the databases. A positive observation is that 60% of the databases are updated at least once a year or after a major event. The spatial data are almost always collected with traditional methods such as field surveys, and analysis of aerial photographs and historical records. 67% of the databases use a classification system adapted from Cruden and Varnes (Cruden DM, Varnes DJ (1996) Landslide types and processes. In: Turner AK, Schuster RL (eds) Landslides, investigation and mitigation, Special Report 247: Transportation Research Board. National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, pp 36–71), so it should be possible to define a limited number of major landslide types and activity classes to be used in all databases. Other problems with regard to interoperability and harmonisation are due to differences in language, the absence of a digital database where spatial and alphanumeric information is linked (the case for 58% of the databases), and the restricted accessibility.