Landslide Impacts in Europe: Weaknesses and Strengths of Databases Available at European and National Scale

Landslides represent a major threat to human life, property, buildings, infrastructure and natural environments in most mountainous and hilly regions of the world. The purpose of this work is to present the results of the analysis carried out by ISPRA on main landslide events and available databases in Europe. The major landslide phenomena occurred in Europe have been collected from the analysis of global disaster databases. For the period 2003–2010, 112 major landslides were recorded. These events, which often occurred at multiple sites for the same triggering factor, claimed a total of 152 fatalities and damaged or destroyed several buildings and transportation infrastructure.