A New Approach to Characterizing Landslide Hazards with Global Crowd Sourcing

Abstract:

Landslide disasters cause thousands of fatalities each year and cumulatively produce more economic damage than most other natural disasters. However, the number and distribution of landslides remain poorly quantified due to their small size and the absence of local, regional or global observing or reporting mechanisms. As a result, there are very few global databases that describe landslide hazards. Characterizing the socioeconomic impacts of landslide hazards worldwide presents an even more challenging task due to the various reporting biases or information gaps in existing regional and global sources. An online system has been developed to improve reporting of landslide hazards at the global scale that leverages crowd sourcing capabilities. Through this portal, users are able to input landslide information in a series of specified fields, including the date, location, impacts, trigger, and setting of the event. They are also able to link to photos so that other users can improve the characterization of the landslide event based on additional information or expert opinion.

This hazard portal and editor provides a foundation to involve citizens in reporting, visualizing and sharing landslide events while improving a global landslide database and introducing them to other geospatial data in the process. A global landslide catalog of over 6,000 events developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center currently anchors this system. This research presents this new crowd-based system and outlines the technology used in developing this system. Preliminary findings of societal metrics, limitations on this type of interactive crowd sourcing portal, and lessons learned from the initial launch of this system will also be presented.