Hazard and Risk Assessments

Landslide hazard and risk assessments help people understand the dangers from landslides to their towns and cities, homes, facilities, and businesses. Landslide hazard assessments are estimates of the probability that landslides will affect a particular area or location, typically within a given timeframe.

The University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez and USGS produced a landslide hazard map for the main island of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. This map is today used by planners for land use decisions and emergency managers for hazard mitigation plans. To reduce loss from future landslides, the USGS and the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez instrumented 15 slopes across the main island and share...

The USGS seeks to provide effective situational awareness about long-term and ongoing hazardous events to improve emergency response, inform the public, and minimize societal disruption. Large, highly mobile landslides generate seismic signals that can be detected by seismic monitoring networks and leave scars and deposits that can be detected from high-resolution remote-sensing imagery. Following...

Once the smoke clears from a wildfire, the danger is not over!! Other hazards, such as flash floods and debris flows, now become the focus. Areas recently burned by wildfires are particularly susceptible to flash floods and debris flows during rainstorms.

Landslide Susceptibility Data and Maps provide tools for hazard assessment prior to an event that may cause landslides.