Abstract
With the increasingly adverse impact of global warming on extreme weather conditions, including landslides, it is more important than ever to alert the public to landslide risks so that people can take precautionary measures. We report the first major project in Hong Kong assessing the public’s understanding of landslides and perceptions of the Landslip Early Warning System (“current LEWS”) and exploring the perceived usefulness of the concept of a multi-tiered LEWS (“multi-tiered LEWS”). In Study 1, we gauged the public’s understanding of landslides and knowledge of the current LEWS by collecting information from five focus groups. That information was used to construct the survey that we administered in Study 2, in which 1834 individuals participated in face-to-face interviews. The results show that only 37% of the participants saw the connection between global warming and landslides. The majority of the sample believed that slope safety has clearly improved over the last decade (88%) and that landslides are a remote concern (91%). Although 90% of the participants were aware of the current LEWS, only 28% were concerned about it because it had little impact on their residential or activity areas. The concept of a multi-tiered LEWS was positively received, although there is an urgent need for further research to demonstrate how to implement this concept with sufficient public education to ensure that it will improve public alertness of landslides.
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Notes
The public Landslip Warning is issued when there is a forecast of 15 or more landslides based on any or multiple of the four thresholds: (a) past 24-h of rainfall, (b) past 23- and 1-h forecasted rainfall, (c) past 22- and 2-h forecasted rainfall, and (d) past 21- and 3-h forecasted rainfall.
In Hong Kong, people primarily speak Cantonese and write using traditional Chinese characters.
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Acknowledgements
This paper is published with the permission of the Director of Civil Engineering and Development, Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The authors would like to thank Regis Chee, Raymond Cheung, George Lau, Dawnie Ng, and Irene Sze for their help in preparing this article.
Funding
Preparation of the paper was facilitated by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council’s Area of Excellence Scheme (Project AoE/E-603/18) and General Research Fund (Project 16601818). Felity Kwok received support from the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme.
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Yik, M., Pun, W.K., Kwok, F.H.C. et al. Perceptions of landslide risks and warnings in Hong Kong. Landslides 20, 1211–1224 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-022-02021-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-022-02021-3