Introduction to regional landslide early warning systems

This is an introductory guide to regional early warning systems for rainfall-triggered landslides. This guide includes an overview of data used, institutional roles, and dissemination and communication approaches. The Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) programme supports world-leading research to enhance the quality, availability and use of risk and forecast information. This is an introductory guide to regional early warning systems for rainfall-triggered landslides. This guide includes an overview of data used, institutional roles, and dissemination and communication approaches.

The topics this guide assesses include:

• Regional landslide early warning systems (LEWSs) deal with the possible occurrence of multiple landslides in a wide geographical area; some regional LEWSs cover national, regional, or municipal areas.
• Regional forecasts rely on historical observations and continuous monitoring of rainfall and landslide events.
• Regional approaches can provide different types of forecasts with different lead times, depending on the rainfall data used. Typically the systems that use rainfall forecasts provide a range of 24-72 hour warnings to 2 week alerts.