Exploring available landslide inventories for susceptibility analysis in Gipuzkoa province (Spain)

Abstract

Abstract As in many landslide-prone areas of the world, landslides are recurrent in the Gipuzkoa province (northern Spain) and commonly cause damage to communication infrastructure such as roads and railways. This geomorphological process also threatens buildings and human beings, albeit in a lesser level. Despite the individual efforts by different institutions and academic research groups, basic and crucial information about historic and ancient landslides occurred in this territory—i.e., landslide inventories—is incomplete or unevenly distributed throughout the province. The aim of this work is to present the state of the art on landslide information through the description of the existing landslide inventories conducted in Gipuzkoa to date. Among the collected information, 5 landslide inventories are in digital format and 11 on paper maps, spanning the period 1991 to 2018. We have compared the digital databases using different strategies to assess their differences and provide some recommendations, specific for Gipuzkoa, to improve the quality of landslide information currently available, to avoid duplicate efforts in data collection and further the understanding of landslide occurrences at regional scale.