Landslide dams around the World – case studies to global datasets

Landslide dams are an important component of slope-fluvial systems, particularly given their potentially disastrous consequences if they breach suddenly. To further research on dam longevity, stability, and failure mechanisms effectively, comprehensive landslide dam dataset are essential. Yet, such datasets from around the world are heterogeneous in their completeness and data-collection approaches, and we still see many geographical “blind spots” where research on landslide dams appears absent, at least within the published literature.

As part of a project to collate and compile a global, accessible landslide-dam database, we present some of the challenges involved in its construction. In addition to data heterogeneity and data gaps, biases and parameter definitions will be discussed and highlighted by several landslide-dam case studies from around the world. The aim of the discussion is to acknowledge these data biases, such as geopolitics, funding, accessibility, and triggering-event factors, and offer solutions for the global research community. We will also clearly define terms that have been vague in landslide-dam research so far. For example, dam height, volume, length and width are not used consistently – even what exactly constitutes a landslide dam can sometimes be a defined differently.