NASA

NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness

October 26, 2023
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5 min read

NASA, Pacific Disaster Center Increase Landslide Hazard Awareness

Communities worldwide now have access to a powerful tool to increase their awareness of landslide hazards, thanks to NASA and the Pacific Disaster Center.

A person stands with their back to the camera, wearing a brown vest that says "USAID". They are looking at a tree-covered mountain in the distance, which has a large landslide going down it, covered in rocks, dirt, and debris. A village sits at the bottom of the hill. The sky is gray and cloudy.
A humanitarian worker from USAID observes the impacts of a landslide. USAID deployed an elite Disaster Assistance Response Team on Nov. 17, 2020, to lead the U.S. response to Hurricanes Eta and Iota.
USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance

After years of development and testing, NASA’s Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness model (LHASA) has been integrated into the Pacific Disaster Center’s (PDC) multi-hazard monitoring, alerting, and decision-support platform, DisasterAWARE. LHASA allows researchers to map rainfall-triggered landslide hazards, giving DisasterAWARE users around the world a robust tool for identifying, tracking, and responding to these threats. The aim is to equip communities with timely and critical risk awareness that bolsters disaster resilience and safeguards lives and livelihoods.

Landslides cause thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damage every year. Developing countries often bear disproportionate losses due to lack of access to hazard early warning systems and other resources for effective risk reduction and recovery. Reports from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction emphasize that early warning systems and early action are among the most effective ways to decrease disaster-related deaths and losses.

A map of Earth, with oceans shaded as black and land as gray. There are numerous circles of differing sizes covering the maps, with colors from white to pink to dark red indicating the number of reported landslide-related fatalities in each region. Many of these fatalaties are concetrated in South and Central America, Asia, India, and the South Pacific Islands, and coastal regions of each continent.
The distribution of reported fatalities from 10,804 rainfall-triggered landslides in NASA’s Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) from 2007 to 2017. White dots represent incidents with zero reported fatalities and dots in the color scale from pink to red represent incidents in the range of 1-5000 fatalities. The NASA landslides team, based primarily out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, develops the Global Landslide Catalog and LHASA with support from NASA’s Disasters program.
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio

“Some local authorities develop their own systems to monitor landslide risk, but there isn’t a global model that works in the same way. That’s what defines LHASA: it works all the time and it covers most regions of the world,” says Robert Emberson, NASA Disasters associate program manager and a key member of the NASA landslides team. “Thanks to our collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center, this powerful landslide technology is now even more accessible for the communities that need it most.”

LHASA uses a machine learning model that combines data on ground slope, soil moisture, snow, geological conditions, distance to faults, and the latest near real-time precipitation data from NASA’s IMERG product (part of the Global Precipitation Measurement mission). The model has been trained on a database of historical landslides and the conditions surrounding them, allowing it to recognize patterns that indicate a landslide is likely.

The result is a landslide “nowcast” – a map showing the potential of rainfall-triggered landslides occurring for any given region within the past day. This map of hazard likelihood can help agencies and officials rapidly assess areas where the current landslide risk is high. It can also give disaster response teams critical information on where a landslide may have occurred so they can investigate and deploy life-saving resources.  

A man on a motorcycle is blocked by a landslide that has fallen across the road, covering it in large boulders, rocks and debris. A few other men working their way around the blockage. The sky is blue and slightly cloudy, and they are in a forested area.
In 2021, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, triggering a series of landslides across the country. Landslides can destroy infrastructure and impede the movement of people and life-saving aid.
United Nations World Food Programme

Partnering to Protect the Vulnerable