Yes, there are some early signs, but they don;t leave enough time before the event, to call it early warning.

Dear Raju,

Yes, early warning is possible in case of landslide but we need to monitor the ground movement regularly by installing inclinometer in various identified vulnerable zone. Also, people started doing research on how to monitor the slope movement by sitting in remote place from the site. Like in India CSIR - Central Building Research Institute, Roorkee, Uttarakhand (state) is doing research on remotely monitor the ground movement after installing movement monitoring sensor in different locations in the site. Scientist from CSIR - CBRI, Roorkee is working about your topic and you may contact to them. ok all the best..

Emmanuel V Murray Thank you sir for your response.

Karthigeyan . S Thank you sir for your response

Yes, it is very possible, and it leads to a clear and visible reduction in human losses.

Shakir Faris Tuleab Thak you for your response. Can you please cite some examples or case studies where early warning in landslide have been done and resluted in saving life of people.

yes

I wrote my PhD thesis on landslide early warning systems and have since published a couple of papers and reports on the issue. You might want to check my profile.

Landslide early warning systems can be implemented on different spatial scales, commonly described as local scale (i.e. single landslide) and the regional scale (i.e. a region, or even an entire country). The technical systems needed for these as well as the type of warnings greatly differ depending on the scale.

Thus, there is no simple answer to your question.

Moreover, I think it is important to understand that early warning systems, regardless of the hazard that they are developed for, are not primarily a technical applications. Early warning systems are very much a social process.

Benni Thiebes Thank you for you reply. I will definitely check your publication.

Raju Thapa Let me know if you have any further questions or require additional information. I am happy to provide more.

For a start, I recommend this paper Conference Paper Landslide early warning systems – fundamental concepts and i...

Hey! Raju

Yes, it is possible and already many early warning systems have developed. But still a question remain unanswered that, how much percentage our early warning system is reliable. As we know landslide is a dynamic phenomenon and all dynamic factors should be incorporated in Landslide Early Warning System (LEWS) and form this point only all developed LEWS get differ in the scale of reliability.

But yes concept has developed, and more auxiliary research and concept development going on for reliable LEWS. I am also doing research on LEWS, if you need to discuss more LEWS, feel free to contact me.

Goodluck

Deepak Rawat How do you define reliability? Isn't this a question of how you define your warning thresholds, acceptable levels of false and missed alarms? And is this something that technicians should decide upon?

I would argue no. To me, this is a political decision.

The technical aspects of an early warning system (monitoring equipment, modelling and forecasting of landslides) are only a small part of an LEWS but tend to be what people think and talk about when considering EWS. Communication and dissemination of warnings and action advises as well as appropriate reactions of the warned actors are extremely important.

I would argue that an EWS is rather a social process than a technical system.

See this paper: Article Warning Systems as Social Processes for Bangladesh Cyclones

Please follow our recent publication about LEWS.

Article Development of community-based landslide early warning syste...

Yes, there are a number of operational landslide early warning systems that have been implemented in different countries around the world. I would recommend this paper for more information on some of those: Article Geographical landslide early warning systems

I note that some have highlighted the lack of lead time in forecasts/warnings limiting the usability of landslide early warning systems. Myself and colleagues (UK, Italy, India) are researching the possibilities of developing broad-scale landslide guidance based on medium-range weather forecasts (large-scale weather patterns for example) which can support shorter-range landslide forecast and warning systems to extend the lead times and improve the usefulness (timeliness of forecasts) and 'actionability' of warnings. More work needed on this though.

In developing Nations like India, the concept has been developed and tested or under testing at select sites by some institutions. Nonetheless, personally I feel it is in early to early middle stage. As India is a large country with several gemorphic and gelogical domains and so are our hilly terrains right from Northwestern Himalayas, Eastern Himalayas, NER, Nilgiris, Western Ghats etc. These all are having difference in their general characters viz. Geology, Geomorphology, LULC patterns, Slope Forming Material, Slope Morphometry etc. and also in Rainfall patterns in these domains. Therefore, a system applied in a particular hilly domain as stated above, may or may not be giving the same success rates. Therefore, continuous field and laboratory based assessments would definitely be helpful in addition to the monitoring systems deployed at different sites. Moreover, observations from the stakeholders and the end users i.e. the people residing in those landslide prone areas should also be considered as far as their views and field based actual general observations (like development of some instability signatures such as ground cracks, bulges, toe erosion, any kind of slip or movement along the slope under investigation/ monitoring etc.) are concerned, while engaged in monitoring studies.

Here in Brazil, some cities have early warning systems based on rainfall thresholds (most landslides here are triggered by extreme rainfall events). So, these warnings (by cellphone messages or by sound alerts) are very important to some neighborhoods and communities with favorable physical conditions to trigger landslides (some places of Rio de Janeiro city for example). Of course, there are several cases in which systems don't work (in general, warnings are not sent as they should), but i think most cases are due to technical problems (not the rainfall thresholds setted, in general).

Landslide early warning systems can be implemented on different spatial scales, usualy defined as local scale (i.e. one bloc of landslide) and the regional scale (i.e. a region, or even an entire country).

Firstely, early warning is possible in case of active landslide: in this caset we need to monitor the ground movement regularly by installing inclinometers, topographic cheking or using differents remote sensing methode such us GPS points in various identified active or susceptible zone to landsliding.

I think the regional scale is complicated and is diffecult to characterise all process.

There are possibilities but will come with extraordinary costs!!

Yes, It is possible. Landslide early warning systems can be implemented on different spatial scales, commonly described as local scale (i.e. single landslide) and the regional scale (i.e. a region, or even an entire country). The technical systems needed for these as well as the type of warnings greatly differ depending on the scale.

If they happened before (in an area) they will happen again. Earlier slides may be visible in some areas.

Sure that it is possible, but beware: you always have uncertainty in your prediction system. So you will be always missing some landslide events. You can issue a warning for landslides everyday, so you don't miss any event. But then people will not believe in your overpredicting system, and then when the landslide really occurs people will be killed and damaged as they will not go to protect them selves (cry wolf syndrome).

Still, scholars (me included) are trying to understand what is the minimum level of accuracy of the prediction to have real social and economical advantages from an early warning system. And personally, I don't know if we can say that we are able to predict at that minimum level of accuracy. This is the true question which should be addressed.

To answer this and other related questions, we proposed a session at the 2023 edition of the EGU General Assembly (#EGU23) entitled "Towards reliable Landslide Early Warning Systems"

You'll find info here: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU23/session/45780

The call-for-abstracts is open; the deadline is 10 January 2023, 13:00 CET.

Who wants to apply for financial travel support should submit the abstract by 1 December 2022, 13:00 CET.