Landslide handbook: a guide to understanding landslides

This handbook is intended to be a resource for people affected by landslides to acquire further knowledge, especially about the conditions that are unique to their neighborhoods and communities. Growing populations may be limited in their geographic expansion, except to occupy unstable, steep, or remote areas. Often, stabilizing landslide-scarred areas is too costly, and some inhabitants have no other places to relocate.

Fortunately, simple, “low-tech” precautions and actions can be adopted to at least ensure an individual’s immediate safety, and this handbook gives a brief overview of many of these options. This handbook helps homeowners, community and emergency managers, and decisionmakers to take the positive step of encouraging awareness of available options and recourse in regard to landslide hazard. Includes a list of references, available in print or on the World Wide Web (Internet), that can be used for further knowledge about landslides. The handbook tries to emphasize visual information through the use of photographs and graphics. Translation is planned into additional languages as funding permits to further facilitate its use.