How can landslide risk maps be validated? Potential solutions with open-source databases

Abstract

Landslides are a worldwide natural hazard that cause more damage and casualties than other hazards. Therefore, social and economic losses can be reduced through a landslide quantitative risk assessment (QRA). In the last two decades, many attempts of quantitative analysis on various scales have been performed; nevertheless, the major difficulty of QRA lies in how precise and reliable the assessment should have to be useful. For this reason, in this paper, we analyzed different freely available datasets and some products of previous research to assess the soundness of the outcomes performed by a recent QRA of slow-moving landslides in the Arno River basin (Central Italy). The validation process was carried out by comparing the abovementioned datasets and two components of the selected QRA (hazard and risk). The obtained results showed a robust correlation between most of the testing dataset and risk components, highlighting the accuracy of the selected QRA.