Efforts in Landslide Risk Reduction in Asia

Abstract

Mountain areas are highly vulnerable to the adverse impacts of landslide disasters, which have been observed to be increasing over the recent years. Many of the related problems and challenges are associated with social, economic and environmental issues. The use of early warning systems (EWS) for natural hazards such as floods and typhoons has advanced fairly rapidly over the recent past and successful use of such systems has helped save lives in affected areas. However, the use of early warning systems for alerting people to landslide hazards is lacking. In order to promote such efforts in the Asian Region and to share experience with good practices in landslide early warning systems, the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) has undertaken landslide early warning-related interventions in a few countries and this has been reported under “IPL-156—Best Practices for Early Warning of Landslides in a Changing Climate Scenario”.

Recently, devastating landslide events have been reported in several cities in Asia located within mountain districts, in both their fringe towns and urban centers. Most of the urban centers are strategically located and play a major role in boosting investment and economic activities for the respective countries. Forecasted adverse climatic trends and climate variations are increasingly making such landslide-prone land in urban built-up areas more insecure for living. In recent years, many landslide events have occurred in hilly district cities of Bangladesh such as Chittagong, Cox’s Bazar, and Tecknaf. The pilot project IPL 180 aims at developing a city-level landslide hazard risk-management strategy in Bangladesh so that other vulnerable cities in Asia will be able to replicate effective practices for reducing future losses. In addition, the paper looks at various other landslide-risk reduction pilot initiatives undertaken in Asia by ADPC.