Community Scale Landslide Resilience: A Citizen-Science Approach

Abstract

Building landslide resilience at a community scale is the most effective way to protect people against landslides. But building resilience at a community scale can become difficult, given the large spatial scale spanned by locations vulnerable to landslides and the number of communities that might get affected. So, in this chapter, we discuss how to build community-scale landslide resilience using a citizen-science approach. The potential of citizen-science approaches for building landslide resilience at the community level is immense, given that the citizens become resources to build resilience. Yet challenges exist in this approach as novel tools and operationalizing methods are seldom found in the literature. Therefore, this chapter examines the requirements, solutions, and dimensions of landslide resilience and presents a framework to strengthen community-scale resilience. The framework addresses how citizens can be engaged before, during, and after a disaster. This chapter also presents a few example tools used to operationalize this theoretical framework, such as Landslide tracker mobile app, Amritakripa mobile app, social media data analysis, and community involvement. It also examines the difficulties found while applying the citizen science approach in two case study locations in India: Munnar in the Western Ghats and Chandmari in Sikkim. This chapter and the case study can help policymakers, community leaders, change makers, administrative officials, and researchers in disaster management.

1 Introduction

Landslides are among the most devastating disasters we can observe on hilly terrains. The spatial and temporal scale associated with landslides can destroy or disperse otherwise flourishing communities on these hilly terrains. Interventions in the form of mitigation measures (Sujatha et al. 2023) and early warning systems (Fathani et al. 2023) are effective tools and can protect communities against landslides. But various factors, such as economic, social, and physical, hinder the adoption of these interventions in poor or vulnerable communities. To translate these vulnerable communities into sustainable and resilient communities, adopting an improved and novel approach to building landslide resilience requires equal participation of all entities, including community citizens (Anderson and Holcombe 2013).

Landslides affected an estimated 4.8 million people and caused more than 18,000 deaths from 1998–2017 globally (Turner 2018). Rising global temperatures due to climate change are expected to trigger more landslides, especially in mountainous areas with extreme rainfall events, snowfall, and glacial melts (Disaster Management 2018; IMD 2018). Additionally, landslides as part of multi-hazard events are becoming a noticeable concern. As per EM-DAT database, the year 2022 witnessed 387 environmental disasters worldwide, an increase from the decadal average of 370 from 2002 to 2021 (CRED https://reliefweb.int/report/world/2022-disasters-numbers). More and more landslides are seen as part of multi-hazard events such as floods, storms, earthquakes, etc. Thus, traditional approaches to disaster management, such as establishing disaster management agencies, building the capacity of rescue forces, etc., are becoming increasingly ineffective. Global prominence has been placed on building resilience to climate change and its associated risks, such as landslides.

However, there is a gap between available scientific knowledge and the adoption of technological interventions by people at the community scale, where people are most vulnerable. This may stem from a lack of fundamental resources in the at-risk communities, including knowledge and expertise, financial support, governance support, effective policies, and pathways to access these interventions. Oftentimes the technological interventions themselves lack the co-design and participatory rural appraisal techniques needed to understand the challenges and needs of specific communities for whom it is designed. Hence to design suitable and easy-to-adopt interventions that are driven by the voice of the people, we need to adopt new approaches that are driven by the citizens. This calls for a close multi-stakeholder partnership between civil protection officials, academicians, and community members to create a novel citizen-science approach toward building landslide-resilient communities, as will be discussed in this book chapter.

This book chapter explores existing interventions that enhance the advancement of climate resilience using citizen-centric approaches in fields of hazard inventory and landslide hazard and risk assessments, illustrated through two case studies from India. The requirements and solutions for achieving economic, social, physical, institutional, and environmental resilience are discussed. The chapter finally proposes some key requirements for achieving a landslide-resilient community throughout the disaster management cycle of pre, post, and during a disaster.

2 Related Works

2.1 Review of the Existing Citizen Science Approach

Citizen science is “Scientific knowledge cogeneration by members of the general public, in collaboration with professional scientists and scientific institutions” (Haklay 2013; Haklay et al. 2021). There have been growing global citizen science associations in recent years owing to the development of new tools and artificial intelligence-based algorithms (Can et al. 2019). Other advantages of the citizen’s approach are increased democratic engagement, public awareness, and involvement in current social challenges (Cieslik et al. 2019). Numerous research articles have used multimedia resources in terms of photos, videos, chats, dialogs, etc., from social media, news, and other open information platforms as sources for data for their research (Kocaman et al. 2018; See et al. 2016; Silvertown 2009). Recent developments in computational technologies can extract useful scientific inputs from these data sources generated by the citizens (Kocaman and Gokceoglu 2019a, b). These approaches are referred to as citizen science. They are useful for landslide studies where people living or working in landslide areas can act like human sensors and deciphers of local information (See et al. 2016). Several volunteer organizations trained by scientific institutions have been introduced in vulnerable places to aid in the quick and cost-effective collection of geodata (Goodchild 2007; Rohan et al. 2020).

Major challenges in using this approach are low accuracy of data, lack of standard terminology, language barriers, uncertainties led by missing data, reduced reliability of the information, and hence special techniques are required to decipher useful information (Goodchild 2007). These factors may drastically affect the regional landslide assessments (Kocaman et al. 2018). As a result, the development of data quality assessment and validation strategies has become a new venue of research in disaster management (Kocaman and Gokceoglu 2019a, b; Gu et al. 2015; Juang et al. 2019). In other words, the focus has been on bringing aspects of geodata such as categorizations based on location, participant type, medium of data collection, type of data, etc., so that reliability can be assessed and assured for developing the Landslide monitoring applications and data collections. (Parajuli and Shakya 2019; See et al. 2016; Can et al. 2020; Rohan et al. 2020). Other developments are in the field of developing efficient tools for volunteers to enable them to provide data and observations on landslides, i.e., NASA landslide reporter; Landslip Landslide tracker (Hariharan and Guntha 2021), runout distance assessments, store them in cloud servers and dynamically display on GIS-based interfaces. In other reviews, published earlier, the emphasis is on the categorization of citizen-science-based tools useful for different parts of disaster management (Kocaman et al. 2018; Kocaman and Gokceoglu 2019a, b). Traditionally evolved local practices are at times more insightful (Dekens 2007; Hiwasaki et al. 2014). However, the contribution of citizen sciences is also subject to geographical location, the technological know-how of the citizens, motivation, and participation behaviors (Franceschinis et al. 2020; Gaventa and Barrett 2010).

A vital aspect of accurate landslide forecasting and modeling is access to a comprehensive and well-maintained hazard inventory (Landslide Reporter 2019). Capturing landslide hazard date, time, location, the magnitude of impact, and the trigger is a necessity recognized by many in the landslide scientific community. However, maintaining such a database is a tremendous challenge for single-hazard events, which is further complicated in multi-hazard events. Specifically for multi-hazard events, the time interval between each hazard is essential to forecast potential risk increases. In lieu of this, the UK NERC/FCDO funded LANDSLIP project ‘Landslide multi-hazard risk assessment, preparedness and early warning in South Asia’ (http://www.landslip.org/) also attempted to create a web and mobile App that allows for crowd-sourced information to create a landslide hazard inventory including information on the trigger, damage assessment and type of landslides.

3 Citizen Science Approach

3.1 Requirements, Solutions, and Dimension of Landslide Resilience

Community resilience against landslides has multiple dimensions associated with Economic, Social, Physical, Institutional, and Environmental resilience. Requirements, solutions, and association with the above dimensions for achieving landslide-resilient communities are enumerated below:

• 1. Comprehensive landslide risk assessment: A comprehensive assessment of landslide risk is essential for identifying areas susceptible to landslides and implementing policies to restrict further development in these fragile locations. These measures help in building the physical and environmental resilience of the community (Ramesh et al. 2023; Rohan et al. 2021; Wadhawan et al. 2020)

• 2. Land-use planning and zoning: Following a landslide risk assessment, proper land-use planning and zoning can help to prevent development in areas that are susceptible to landslides and protect the community from the impacts of landslides, resulting in establishing physical, economic, and environmental resilience of the community.

• 3. Building codes and standards: Developing building codes and standards that consider landslide risk can help ensure that buildings are constructed to withstand potential landslide hazards such as sinking or creep movements. These activities would help in bringing in physical resilience.

• 4. Early warning systems: Early warning systems (EWS) can help to alert residents to the potential for landslides and give them enough time to evacuate or take other protective/preventive measures. In the long term, the instrumentation output of EWS can help in planning and implementing landslide mitigation measures and hence help bring in physical and environmental resilience. (Thirugnanam et al. 2022)

• 5. Education and awareness: Educating the community about the risks associated with landslides and their exposure level will help improve the community’s risk perception. Additionally, providing them with information on how to prepare for and respond to landslides as a community, as opposed to individuals, is very important for building the community’s social resilience.

• 6. Community involvement, Coordination, and collaboration: Effective coordination and collaboration between government agencies, community organizations, and community members, are essential for implementing landslide risk reduction measures and building a resilient community. Moreover, a changemaker or community leader who works in tandem with organizations such as the Disaster Management Agency (DMA), Disaster Response Forces (DRF), and Non-Governmental Agencies (NGOs) can help strengthen the institutional resilience of the community.

4 Operationalization of the Citizen-Science Approach

Operationalization of the citizen-science approach is a complex task that involves coordination among the community members, collaboration with stakeholders, technical expertise, institutional capacity, supporting data, and access to resources and tools. The implementation of this approach within a framework and the use of various tools for implementation is discussed further in this section below.

4.1 Framework: Involving Citizens in Building Community-Scale Landslide Resilience

This section discusses a citizen-centric framework for establishing a landslide-resilient community at various stages of a disaster cycle (i.e., pre, during, and post-disaster). Figure 2 below depicts the framework for achieving a landslide-resilient community involving citizens. A further model is being adopted and operationalized at two case study areas in the Indian subcontinent, one in the Western Ghats (Munnar, Kerala) and another in the MCT zone of Himalaya (Chandmari, Sikkim). Munnar is a hill station in the Western Ghats, with an altitude of 1532 m, spanning an area of 187 km2, and Munnar gram panchayat has a total of 32,029 inhabitants.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munnar) Chandmari is a settlement in Sikkim Himalayas, with an altitude of 1786 m, spanning an area of 0.56 km² consisting of 1043 inhabitants.

(https://geoiq.io/places/Chandmari/QcioAkbcFC)

4.2 Pre-Disaster Measures

“Prevention is better than cure” research shows that a considerable amount of cost and time can be saved if the communities are prepared to face the disasters. To prepare, the communities need to be aware of their physical, economic, or social vulnerabilities. Mapping them provides clarity to the community members, which can also help them to be watchful, stay alert, be ready for the worst case, and undertake possible mitigations to avoid the projected loss. Measures such as planting vegetation on a slope, blanketing the slope surface for soil erosion control, directing surface runoffs, using flexible pipes to avoid breaking up utility lines, repairing buildings, and avoiding water leakages can be very helpful in reducing the chance of a landslide and minimizes the damage during the onset of a landslide (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Proposed framework for involving citizens in building community-scale landslide resilience

During heavy rain, there are chances of power and network failures, and people may lose connectivity from the outside world and must remain on their own. During heavy rain, they must take turns remaining awake during the night and be prepared for the worst case. If they hear any unusual rumbling sound, they should alert others and evacuate the houses. Old-age family members, pregnant women, and children should be given special care during such times. Stocking essential supplies can help them feed their families when shops close or roads get blocked in remote areas. All families in the community should be trained to prepare a survival kit (also known as an emergency/disaster kit) that includes their important documents, medicines, clothes, travel kits, sanitary items, non-perishable food items, and any other necessary items ready in bags so that as soon as the decision on evacuation is made, they can leave the place without further delay.

Organize community engagement programs with the assistance of disaster management experts from whom the community can get awareness about landslide precursors, do’s and don’ts during disasters, emergency first aid measures, etc. During these engagements, the community becomes acquainted with tools and technologies such as crowd-sourced apps (Ex: Landslide Tracker App, AmritaKripa App), and others that can assist the community at various stages of the disaster. Moreover, these events help the community identify community champions and volunteers who can play vital roles during a disaster. Additionally, these community champions can take the knowledge of this training to various other individuals at the grassroots level of the community and transfer knowledge related to evacuation routes, safe grounds, and nearest relief camp locations. Such engagements will establish social resilience in the community.

During the monsoon season, the community must watch for rainfall, river water levels, and groundwater levels through wells. These are essential near real-time information on the hydrological triggers of landslides. Similarly, the tilting of trees can be indicative of creep movements. Surface slips may indicate subsidence, fault activation, and induced seismicity. However, the communities living in landslide-prone areas have learned to live with the disasters over time. Yet, assisting them with planned frameworks and tools can help them become more resilient, in light of climate change leading to an increasing number of yearly landslides.

4.3 During-Disaster Measures

Once the community receives the early warning for evacuation from the government, its priority would be to act quickly and move all its members to safe ground and then to the nearest relief camps. During the evacuation process, the community members have to ensure higher priority to vulnerable community members such as old aged, specially-abled, pregnant women, and children. Further, ensure to take the survival kits prepared during the pre-disaster period. This survival kit will help the community survive until relief materials reach various agencies.

Once the community is established temporarily in the relief camp, the next step is to ensure that all the community members are evacuated and that no one is left behind. Depending upon the available evacuation time and efficacy of the evacuation procedure, if some members couldn’t evacuate, such members need to be identified during further search and rescue operations. Community leaders should coordinate these activities alongside the regional government agencies in charge of disaster management, such as the Disaster Relief Force (DRF) and the Disaster Management Agency (DMA). The community can utilize crowd-sourced tools, such as Amritakripa, social media platforms, etc., to coordinate these activities. The community also needs to ensure human rights protection during the disaster. This priority must be taken by the community leaders with support from the community. The community should also adjust and adapt to support the needs of the individuals on an equity basis.

4.4 Post-Disaster Measures

Depending on the scale and magnitude of the disaster, the damage to various infrastructures, utilities, and houses will vary. Hence, post-disaster management activities must be started by conducting a damage assessment. The outcome to the damage assessment will be used to plan the further rehabilitation process and appeals to central govt agencies for financial aid. Often conducting a detailed damage assessment takes a lot of time and leads to delays in further processes. Still, with the aid of community leaders, it is possible to get rough damage estimates, using which central agencies can expedite the rehabilitation process.

The rehabilitation process has varying complexities associated with the financial/economic dimension. Though some citizens would have insurance benefits and could quickly bounce back, the community’s poor/economically backward citizens would often rely on government relief funds, thereby extending the economic impact on their lives. Families with missing or deceased members would have to reshuffle their roles depending on their losses. For example, the loss of an income-producing member of the family would imply higher economic vulnerability. Hence, to resolve such issues, the community should actively engage with various govt and non-govt agencies to get benefits for vulnerable members of the community. The community can also set up self-help groups (SHGs) that can engage these people and generate income for them. These activities will help in the economic and social resilience of the community.

Apart from the short-term activities described above, the long-term activities during the post-disaster period will help ensure the community can build back better and make itself more resilient against future disasters. These aspects involve better policies, technological interventions, mitigation measures, etc., but these topics are beyond the scope of the citizen-science approach. They hence won’t be covered in this book chapter.

5 Tools for Operationalization

5.1 Community Engagement

Citizen involvement in the design and development process helps build awareness and a sense of ownership, leading to resilience building. In Munnar, the community was made to get involved from the beginning of the deployment stages. Community engagement programs were established following the deployment to explain the capabilities and other features of the landslide early warning system. Community members and the individuals living close to the deployment site got involved in maintaining the system by providing access to water and other resources, changing batteries as needed, and alerting us about animal intrusion, damaged cables, etc. This way, the community took ownership of the system. The first step towards resilience is to increase the local community’s awareness level of the potential hazards their community is facing. Engaging the local community in pre-disaster drills to impart knowledge on proper evacuation routes and procedures. These drills would also help identify community leaders who can lead during such events. These drills would also help the community identify and recognize the vulnerable people in their community, such as the old aged, handicapped, people with special needs, etc., and be prepared to act during the limited time after warnings are issued.

5.2 Social Media Data Analysis

Social media has been used in disaster preparedness and management to strengthen situational awareness and improve emergency response. The common public can be informed of authoritative situational notifications by following official natural disaster management organizations on social media. We have used historical and real-time Twitter data to arrive at models that provide a spatiotemporal summary of the events related to “heavy rainfall before a landslide or a flood disaster,”. These precursor data are collated and evaluated, then the plausible occurrence of natural hazards that can be anticipated is identified using event detection algorithms. Due to the flooding of tweets during heavy rainfall and other disaster precursor conditions, government officials cannot decide when to take an event seriously because the information is not spatially and temporally quantified. This work helps the government authorities in decision-making and will provide situational awareness for the public (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Tools used in the operationalization of the citizen-science approach

5.3 AmritaKripa Mobile App

AmritaKripa is a disaster relief platform where users can request help regarding evacuation, medicines, and supplies, and other groups of people can provide the supplies. It has been used extensively during the 2018 and 2019 Kerala (Guntha et al. 2020) floods, where citizens’ inputs and feedback have helped it to organically evolve and upgrade to make it more user-friendly, flexible, and effective for managing rescue and relief efforts during single or multi-hazard situations. The location-based app could locate the demand and supplies, summarize, and help coordinate the efforts. This was also supported by 24/7 call centers where people could report their needs and the availability of excess resources. The app has supported such as (a) Requests and Offers; (b) Types, subtypes, and attributes; (c) Summary. The app was supported by a 24/7 call center during the 2018 and 2019 Kerala extreme events as some people were not able to enter information into the app due to poor connectivity, lack of time, and training, however with the help of the call center this issue was taken care of.

5.4 Landslide Tracker Mobile App

The frequency of landslides on vulnerable hill slopes increases during the monsoon season. Data collection on vital variables is necessary to enhance disaster management due to the ever-increasing landslide incidences. Amrita has created a crowdsourcing-based application to facilitate real-time data collection, validation, summary, and distribution processes, as shown in Fig. 3. This software was created and developed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham as part of the LANDSLIP research project (http://www.landslip.org/). It is also freely accessible on Google Play Store.

Fig. 3

Landslide tracker mobile App: A crowdsourced mobile app for ‘Spatial-temporal tracking of landslide events’

It integrates heterogeneous data into a structural database, which includes numbers, text, GPS locations, landmarks, and photos. Using GPS location, date and time of occurrence, images, type, material, size, impact, area, geology, geomorphology, and comments, this geo-enabled approach aids in the real-time tracking of landslides. Additionally, it supports offline data entry. To guarantee the accuracy of landslide data, it also offers multiple-level user accounts based on their expert levels, such as Tracker, Investigator, and Expert. The occurrences have been recorded and tracked using innovative UI designs. All users have quick access to see the submitted landslides. The User can view entered landslides using the Google Maps interface, the tabular listing, or the landslide image listing. Date/Time and other filters can narrow down the landslides. The smartphone app uses brief papers and videos to raise awareness about the risk of landslides. It contains instructions for staying safe, taking pictures, mapping, and selecting data from various possibilities. The suggested methodology is unique because it improves community involvement, incorporates event data collecting, organization, geographical and temporal summarization, and validates landslip events and their impact. It locates, maps, and informs landslide incidents in real-time so that appropriate disaster management procedures can be started to lower the risk level. The training was given to the community to build resilience to landslides through community involvement and student involvement in technical and social elements. The training was provided on how to measure rainfall at people’s houses using the “Landslide Tracker” smartphone app (Guntha and Vinodini Ramesh 2021, April), as well as how to map the precursors of landslides, such as fissures in structures and roadways, rising river levels, etc. The current gap between scientific ideas and their practical implications in society can be closed by using an integrated strategy of technically technical and socially social involvement.

6 Case Study: Implementation of Framework

As mentioned, the above framework has been implemented in two case study sites. The two-case study site description is given below:

• Munnar is situated in the Western Ghats region of the Indian peninsula. It is a hill station and a popular tourist destination, with more than 24,000 international and 780,000 domestic tourists. Extreme rainfall events influenced by South Asian monsoon, improper drainage, development of buildings, roads, slope modifications, etc., trigger frequent landslides yearly. The landslide potential is enhanced by three rivers that converge in Munnar, causing flooding. The communities and individuals living in Munnar face multiple challenges during monsoon season, threatening their security, livelihood, and life due to these landslides.

• Chandmari is situated in the MCT zone of the Himalayas in Sikkim state of India. It is also a hill station and a popular tourist destination. The population density of Chandmari is 1858 people per sq. km. The terrain, geology, and climatic setting of Chandmari make it prone to landslides. Chandmari sees numerous large to very small-scale surficial landslides every year. Apart from this Chandmari has also experienced cloud burst events in the past, and hence community resilience-based approach is more crucial.

The framework implementation in the case study area during the various phases of disaster is shown in Figs. 4, 5 and 6. The community’s citizens are involved in various pre-disaster activities during the pre-disaster phase. Figure 4 shows images related to various pre-disaster activities undertaken in the case study locations: Munnar and Chandmari. Figure 4a shows the DIY rain gauge used by school children in the community to measure rainfall. Figure 4b shows the rainfall measurement records maintained by the children in the community. The figure shows that the daily cumulative rainfall in the month of June, which is the monsoon season, is increasing from June 13 onwards. Such rainfall quantified information provides precise awareness to the community rather than perceiving it as qualitative information such as light or heavy rainfall. Figure 4c shows the community members measuring the cross-section and bathymetry of various streams before the onset of the monsoon season to estimate the water level rise in streams and to understand the discharge capability and its changes resulting from sedimentation. Figure 4d shows the community members recording a landslide in their locality using the Landslide Tracker app. Figure 4e shows the community engagement program organized by Amrita and the local panchayat officers, community leaders, police cops, firefighters, and community members attending this event. Figure 4f shows the youth members, especially school and college girls, involved in the discussion before the monsoon. Community champions are equipped to measure and monitor the discharge of rivers from a bridge of an already measured cross-section.

Fig. 4

Implementation of the proposed framework in the pre-disaster period. (a). Measuring rainfall using manual rain gauges by school children. (b). The intensification of rainfall is shown from the data collected by kids in Munnar. (c). Live-in labs students measuring the cross-section of the river in low flow time. This was useful for estimating river discharge (cross-section *height * velocity). (d). Locating and mapping the fresh surface slips. (e). A community engagement program is being conducted involving all the stakeholders. f) Girl students are being trained to map their vulnerability. (g). Community champions are equipped to measure and monitor the discharge of rivers from a bridge of an already measured cross-section

Fig. 5

Implementation of the proposed framework during the disaster period. (a). Shows a landslide damaging a house. (b). Coordinated rescue and ensured supplies during relief operations by volunteers. (c). Community champions coordinate to clear the drains during the monsoon to smooth the passage of excess water. (d). Community volunteers coordinating along with the NDRF team are working to rescue people. e) Shows advertising of the Amrita Kripa Rescue app and 24-hour operational call center where people could request help during the 2018 and 2019 Kerala multi-hazards. (f) Shows a group of Amrita volunteers working in the set-up, receiving calls, updating the App, and supporting the ground teams to the location of the victims

Fig. 6

Implementation of the proposed framework in the post-disaster period. (a). Shows the work in progress after the Rajamala landslide and coordinated rehabilitation. (b). Shows the active community members from Munnar volunteering in relief camps, ensuring the food supplies for the affected people sheltered in the relief camps. (c). Shows the screenshot for the landslide tracker app used for systemic landslide information sharing. (d). Figures show that district administration distributes the relief amount to affected people. (e) shows a group of volunteers with a truck filled with food and essential supplies. (f). Fig shows a group from Amrita interacting, consoling, and counseling the people of communities who lost their family members in the landslide

Figure 5 shows images of various activities during a landslide disaster undertaken in the case study locations: Munnar and Chandmari. Figure 5a shows a house that was damaged due to a landslide in 2018. Another catastrophic landslide happened near our deployment site in Munnar in August-2020. Figure 5b also shows another location of a big landslide event in Rajamala, Munnar, where the volunteers started coordinating the rescue and relief operations after the landslide. Figure 5c shows the combined effort by the community members to clear the drains during the monsoon for smooth passage of excess water, because excess water accumulated may lead to a rise in pore-water pressure, which could further lead to slips in the soil. Figure 5d shows community volunteers coordinating with the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team to rescue people. Figure 5e shows the Amrita Kripa Rescue app advertisement and 24 hr. operational call center during the 2018 Kerala multi-hazard event. Over 6000 users had installed Amrita Kripa mobile app and call center to request help, rescue, food supplies, medicines, essentials, etc., during the 2018 and 2019 Kerala multi-hazards, impacting more than 400,000 lives. There are several cases of lost children and missing parents, and they need to be identified. For modeling landslides and early warning, it is very important to maintain systemic inventories and records on recent landslides. Figure 5f is a picture while the Amrita volunteers were working on setting up a call center, receiving calls, updating the App, and supporting the ground teams to the location of the victims.

Figure 6 shows images related to various activities during the post-disaster period. Figure 6a shows the coordinated rehabilitation work in progress soon after the Rajamala landslide. There was massive destruction, roads were blocked, bridges were washed away, and tons of debris accumulated, which needed to be removed to smooth the transportation and utility lines. After the disaster hits an area, some houses are fully damaged, whereas some are partially damaged. Usually, it takes a while for people to get back to normal life. They might repair and live in the same houses or get a new place to build houses. During such time they must spend time in the relief camps. Figure 6b. Shows the active community members from Munnar volunteering in relief camps, ensuring the food supplies for the affected people sheltered in the relief camps. Often during rescue and relief operations, negative social elements are also active. Figure 6c. Shows the screenshot for the landslide tracker app used for systemic landslide information sharing. Figure 6d. Shows the district administration distributing the relief amount to affected people. Figure 6e Shows a group of volunteers with a truck filled with food and essential supplies. Figure 6f shows a group of social scientists from Amrita interacting, and counseling the people of communities who lost their family members in the landslide. During a disaster, people might have to endure trauma and stress. They are survivors of the landslide. However, some may have lost their near and dear ones, faced injuries, and might be mentally ill post-disaster. There are cases where some children deny going to school, they fear water. During our study in Kerala, we have witnessed cases where people who have invested their entire savings in building their house, when the house was buried in a landslide, get into an acute depression stage and need help. Long-term counseling programs and other economic and social resilience measures must be Self-help groups.

7 Discussion

7.1 Practical Challenges & Implementation Gaps

Achieving landslide community resilience is a complex and multifaceted challenge that requires addressing various practical challenges. In general, the challenges include:

• Unwillingness to relocate: During our interviews, we found that few community members show a lack of willingness to relocate to safer locations despite being told by the officials that they reside at potential risk. The various factors for this generic unwillingness might be (i) due to emotional attachment to their homes and communities, (ii) due to concerns about losing their livelihoods, (iii) due to concern regarding access to services and amenities in the relocated place, (iv) due to lack of sufficient incentives from the govt such as financial compensations to set-up new infrastructure such as building house, fencing wall, etc. (v) due to trust deficits between the community members and the stakeholders, and (vi) general social anxiety in the community is also seen as relocations involving physically unrooting the entire community from its current location.

  To address these challenges and implementation gaps, involving community members in the decision-making process, providing adequate support and incentives, and working closely with relevant government agencies, NGOs, and other stakeholders is important. Effective communication and awareness-raising efforts can also help to build trust and understanding between community members and those responsible for implementing the relocation program. Finally, it’s important to develop comprehensive and sustainable relocation plans that address the needs and concerns of all stakeholders, including those being relocated and the broader community.

• Non-transfer of indigenous knowledge: The very fact that these vulnerable communities have survived in a landslide-prone area indicates strong indigenous knowledge regarding landslides. This knowledge includes ways to plan their settlements, building architectures, selection of crops that strengthen slope stability, rainwater management, locations of ephemeral drainages, etc. However, with increasing population and modernization, this indigenous knowledge about the risk and living in synchronization with nature is not efficiently transferred from generation to generation. This leads to weakening the coping capacity of the new generation.

  The protection of indigenous knowledge for landslide resilience faces several challenges, such as (i) lack of recognition and acknowledgment of the value of indigenous knowledge systems, (ii) many modern engineering approaches to landslide resilience tend to ignore or dismiss traditional knowledge and practices (iii) lack of younger generation’s interest in understanding and appreciation of indigenous knowledge, (iv) lack of documentation and preservation of traditional knowledge, as most of it exist in oral form between the older generation, and (vi) finally lack of effective collaboration and communication between indigenous communities and modern scientific communities.

• Lack of risk self-perception: Individuals or communities often underestimate the potential risk of landslides in their area. This can occur due to a variety of factors, such as a lack of knowledge or awareness about the local geology and topography, a belief that past landslides were isolated incidents and unlikely to occur again, or a sense of complacency due to a lack of recent landslide events.

  However, this lack of proper landslide risk perception can be dangerous, leading to inadequate preparation and response measures in the event of an actual landslide. Thus, individuals and communities must be aware of the potential risks and take appropriate steps to mitigate them. Disaster education, awareness programmes, engagement in citizen-stakeholder dialogues, etc., can help raise the community’s landslide risk self-perception.

• Security issues in relief camps: From our interviews in the study area, when people from different walks of life are in relief camps, there are cultural gaps, and inequity in terms of gender, age, race, caste, religion, etc., which may lead to dominance, cases of harassment, abuse, etc. This is one of the major hindrances to the people’s willingness to evacuate to relief camps and temporary shelters.

• Limited resources: Building resilience to landslides requires significant resources, including financial, technical, and human resources. Getting approval and funding to conduct such engagement programs is also a challenge. Many communities lack the necessary resources to implement and sustain resilience measures, hindering their efforts. The community leaders and NGOs having a rapport with the stakeholders can somewhat solve this practical challenge.

• Community participation and ownership: Community participation and ownership are critical for effective landslide community resilience; however, the practical challenges are (i) people living in landslide-vulnerable communities are usually from the lower middle class and depend on daily earnings; (ii) engaging communities can be challenging, particularly if they lack awareness or understanding of landslide risks. The practical challenge would be to make the individuals in the community understand the importance and their responsibility for the community’s welfare.

• Limited technical expertise: Implementing landslide resilience measures often requires technical expertise in engineering, geology, and hydrology fields. Understanding landslide risk is a multidisciplinary challenge and requires integrating several domains of knowledge, which is very challenging. Many communities, particularly those in low-income countries, lack access to such expertise. Support from stakeholders, strong community leadership, and commitment to work for society can somewhat solve this limitation.

• Data availability and quality: Reliable data on landslide risks, vulnerabilities, and impacts are critical for effective resilience planning and implementation by stakeholders. However, data availability and quality can be a significant challenge in many landslide-prone areas, particularly in low-income countries.

• Institutional capacity: Effective landslide community resilience requires strong local, regional, and national institutional capacity. However, many institutions lack the resources, capacity, and political will to effectively address landslide risks.

• Hurdles in outreach programs: While conducting outreach programs, people frequently use the time to discuss other critical everyday issues that they want to transmit to the administration because officials of the administration are present. As a result, bringing the ordinance to the topic of disaster becomes difficult. However, smart moderation of the programs, effective communication skills, and support of local leadership should be sought in such situations.

Addressing these practical challenges requires a multi-stakeholder approach involving community members, government agencies, NGOs, and other leaders. Key strategies include building community awareness and participation, improving technical capacity, enhancing data availability and quality, strengthening institutional capacity, and mobilizing resources to support resilience-building efforts.

8 Conclusion

The growing potential of citizen science with increased internet use is being utilized globally for extracting and validating essential information for landslide modeling and early warnings. This work discusses the gigantic potential of citizen-science techniques for establishing landslide resilience at the community level. It discusses implementing a proposed framework in the Indian context with two case study areas. This citizen-centric framework has been assorted at various stages of a disaster cycle, considering pre, during, and post-disaster time.

It also discusses the requirements, solutions, and dimensions of landslide resilience which went into developing effective disaster management tools, including Community Engagement, Social media data analysis, the Amrita Kripa mobile app, and the Landslide Tracker mobile app. They have been illustrated along with various practical challenges such as limited resources, limited technical expertise, and non-willingness of people to evacuate their houses experienced during the implication of the proposed approach.

Providing aids like training, awareness programs, co-design workshops, tools for mapping and sharing information, requesting supplies, and free medical camps could bridge the gaps and solve such challenges. Further effective communication skills, support of local leadership, community awareness programs, encouraging participation, improving technical capacity, enhancing data availability and quality, strengthening institutional capacity, and mobilizing resources to support resilience-building efforts are requisites. These practices can sustain the culture of keeping up the indigenous knowledge of local climate, local disasters, and resilient practices exercised in the community. Such frugal but quantitative measurements can transform and empower ordinary citizens into citizen scientists. The case study in this article can be useful for policy-makers, community leaders, change-makers, administrative officials, and researchers in disaster management. It can be implemented in other landslide-prone areas with minimal changes.