Development of a system for landslide risk assessment for Cuba

In many developing countries, such as Cuba, landslide-affected areas are not systematically mapped in a national inventory and no “regional to local” approach for landslide hazard and risk assessment has been carried out so far. Most of the conventional landslide studies in Cuba are qualitative in nature and focus on description of phenomena or on landslide susceptibility assessment. Moreover, most of the quantitative landslides risk assessment methodologies that have been developed elsewhere are very case-specific and require many types of data, on landslide occurrences and impacts, most of which are not available in Cuba. This research is aiming at the development of a methodology for spatial landslide risk assessment for the Civil Defence in Cuba, taking into account the conditions of Cuba regarding the required levels (scales) of analysis, the triggering factors and the data availability. It aims at implementing the methodology in four case study areas at national level (1:1,000,000 scale), provincial level (1:100,000 scale), municipal level (1:50,000 scale) and local level (1:25,000 scale). This hierarchical approach will allow comparing the suitability of risk assessment methods at each level for the specific conditions of Cuba. The research will focus on the generation of a national landslide inventory database, which should provide the magnitude and frequency information needed for risk assessment. The landslide inventory will be carried out by setting up a landslide-reporting system by staff from the 169 local Civil Defence branches in Cuba, and by multitemporal airphoto and satellite image interpretation, using visual stereoscopic interpretation methods.