# Presentation: 838156

## Natural Hazards Science – Reducing the World’s Risk 

**U.S. Department of the Interior**
**U.S. Geological Survey**

**Natural Hazards Science – Reducing the World’s Risk**** **

**Landslide Preparedness for Disaster Prevention International Consortium on Landslides**

**Dr. P. Patrick Leahy**
**Acting Director**
**U.S. Geological Survey**
**October 13, 2005**

## Natural disasters afflict all regions of the world.
Recent Natural Hazards: Pakistan; Indian Ocean; Rita; Katrina; Landslides in California; Mount St. Helens.
Improved global disaster reduction and warning is a shared, global need.
Over the decade 1990-1999, disasters killed 500,000 people and caused $750 billion of damage, according to data in the, “Living with Risk” report of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. 

**Recent Natural Hazards: Pakistan; Indian Ocean; Rita; Katrina; Landslides in California; Mount St. Helens.**
**Improved global disaster reduction and warning is a shared, global need.**
**Over the decade 1990-1999, disasters killed 500,000 people and caused $750 billion of damage, according to data in the, “Living with Risk” report of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. **

**The Need for Natural Hazard Preparedness**

**Notes:**
Natural disasters afflict all regions of the world, and improved global disaster reduction and warning is a shared, global need. Over the decade 1990-1999, disasters killed 500,000 people and caused $750 billion of damage, according to data presented in the “Living with Risk” report of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. 

Earlier this year, the Nation's attention was tragically focused on landslides, as rescue workers searched for the missing after a devastating landslide on January 10, 2005, buried a number of homes in La Conchita, California.  In the end, more than 30 homes were damaged or destroyed, 14 people were injured, and 10 people lost their lives. In February, stories of rescue and loss once again emerged from California as heavy rains triggered deadly mudslides and rock falls. Sadly, these communities are not alone in their losses. Landslides cost the Nation an estimated average of 25–50 lives and $1.65–$3.3 billion* every year. They disrupt communities, transportation routes, fuel conduits, and other aspects of commerce and daily life across all 50 States. 
USGS personnel in the National Landslide Hazards Program (NLHP) are working to learn more about landslides and prevent the devastating losses of life and property they can cause by helping individuals, consultants, planners, and a variety of government agencies to better understand landslides and the hazards they can pose. 

## The Role of U.S. Geological Survey

**Mission: The USGS serves the nation by providing reliable scientific information to **
**describe and understand the Earth; **
**minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; **
**manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources;**
** ****and enhance and protect our quality of life.**
**USGS has the lead federal responsibility to provide warnings for landslides, earthquakes, and volcanoes.**

**Notes:**
Landslides can occur and cause damage in all 50 states.
Direct costs of landslides—destruction of infrastructures and property--in the United States are estimated at a minimum of $3.5 billion per year (2005 dollars).  We have much less information on the indirect costs—e.g., the interruption to businesses, transportation networks vital for commerce—but these costs are most likely even greater than the direct costs.  
Landslides cause between 25 to 50 deaths in the United States annually.

## USGS Focus on Natural Hazards Science

**The scientific community has to make more compelling arguments ahead natural disasters to ensure the importance of science is acknowledged as a primary tool to mitigate damage.**
**USGS Hazards Focus: Landslides, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and wildfires.**

**Notes:**
With USGS science and technology, we are striving to prevent natural hazards from becoming disasters;
USGS science can help save lives, minimize property damage, and reduce risks that may result from natural hazards.
USGS hazards information can reduce disaster losses with forecasts and warnings of hazards; products in formats that can guide rescue and recovery efforts; knowledge about the areas at risk from natural hazards; and public understanding of why, where, how, and when natural disasters occur.
Examples of USGS hazards science tools in 2005: Debris flow advisories for Southern California; Satellite Data for Tsunami Disaster Relief; The National Volcano Early Warning System Report; New map of daily probability of earthquake shaking in Southern California; Economic impact study of Los Angeles earthquake released – estimated at $250 billion with 3,000 to 18,000 fatalities and 142,000 to 735,000 displaced households – by USGS and SCEC; The NOAA-USGS Debris Flow Warning System Report/Southern California Pilot Project; and support for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita such transforming urgent 911 callers’ street addresses into geospatial coordinates and plot to maps for potential rescue efforts, providing geospatial data and maps to organize information needed to deploy search and rescue crews, firefighters, medical teams, reconstruction teams, developing detailed street-level search and rescue flood-status maps, and documenting potential flooded infrastructure converting aerial flight video to maps for critical information. USGS scientists are also sampling impacted waters, marking and flagging high-water marks to document flooding and storm surge, repairing and replacing damaged streamgages to restore flood warning capacities and installing temporary gages throughout flooded areas in southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana to provide water-level information to FEMA and others. 

## USGS National Landslide Hazards Program

**USGS National Landslide ****Hazards Program**

**  ****Strives to reduce loss of life and property to landslide****    hazards through improved understanding an****    effective mitigation;**
**  ****USGS National Landslide Information Center****    (****http://landslides.usgs.gov/**** );**
**  ****Develop improved approaches for landslide hazard****    assessments;**
**  ****Post-disaster response;**
**  ****Public Information and outreach.**

**Notes:**
The Landslide Hazards Program at the U.S. Geological Survey, despite being a rather small program—particularly in comparison with our efforts in earthquake and volcano hazards research—has produced some world-class research and researchers.  I am particularly pleased to note that the primary award presented by ICL each year is named after a famous USGS employee, David Varnes.  I also note that Bob Schuster, who is in the audience today, was the first recipient of this award at your Vancouver meeting in 2003.   

Because the USGS staff doing landslide hazard research is limited in number, the USGS does not attempt to conduct nation-wide inventories of all landslide activity in this large country.  I know that many nations represented here at this meeting, conduct much more systematic inventories.  Instead, USGS scientists are focusing their efforts in three or four areas.  Research in landslide forming processes, and production of landslide-susceptibility hazard maps particularly in some of our western states and the Appalachian mountains in the east, remain a high priority.  In recent years our researchers have responded to landslide and flood disasters in central and south America, the Caribbean, as well as most recently in southern California.  
These response efforts, and a greater emphasis on training the public in mitigating landslide hazards through better community planning and zoning, is becoming a larger and larger part of all of our experts.  As Director of the USGS, I think it particularly important to find the right balance between the critical research into basic landslide processes, and our duty to help protect the lives and property of our citizens.  With a small staff, finding the right balance is particularly important.

##   Framework for Reducing Losses 
  Research 
  Hazard Mapping and Assessments 
  Real-Time Monitoring 
  Loss Assessment 
  Public Awareness and Education 
  Preparedness, Response, and Recovery

**  ****Framework for Reducing Losses **
**  ****Research **
**  ****Hazard Mapping and Assessments **
**  ****Real-Time Monitoring **
**  ****Loss Assessment **
**  ****Public Awareness and Education **
**  ****Preparedness, Response, and Recovery**

**National Landslide Hazard ****Mitigation Strategy**

**Notes:**
The USGS, working with a wide array of partners, developed a comprehensive national strategy for addressing the widespread landslide hazards facing the nation. I know that Peter Lyttle has made copies of this document available to anyone at this meeting who are interested.  The strategy, reviewed by the National Research Council, identifies nine major elements of an expanded national program for landslide mitigation.  The strategy is robust and well conceived but could only be fully achieved with a considerable increase in funding. Nine Elements: Research; Hazard Mapping and Assessments; Real-Time Monitoring; Loss Assessment; Information, Collection, Interpretation, Dissemination, and Archiving; Guidelines and Training; Public Awareness and Education; Implementation of Loss Reduction Measures; and Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery.

## Landslide Planning Advisory Guide

**American Planning Association and ****U.S. Geological Survey launching guide today;**
**Landslide planning guide for the 30,000 U.S. city planners nationwide;**
**Basic information on landslides, how to evaluate landslide potential for an area, and long-term and new-development planning;**
**Recommendations for partnerships with the private sector.**

**Notes:**
This practical guidebook is designed to help planners incorporate landslide hazards information into the comprehensive planning process. Other products include training and workshops for local planners and planning commission members; a series of GIS and computer-based mapping and analytical tools with relevant remote sensing data; a curriculum for use by planning schools to incorporate landslide hazards into land-use planning programs; and Web-site, referral service, APA member newsletters, journal articles, and CD-ROMs.

## NOAA-USGS Flash Flood and Debris Flow Warning System Pilot Project

**NOAA-USGS Flash Flood and Debris Flow Warning System Pilot Project**

**Southern California pilot project; **
**Improve forecasts after recent wildfires;**
**Warn public and alert emergency managers;**
**Site-specific Outlook Maps of at-risk areas;**
**Watches and Warnings;**
***NOAA-USGS Debris Flow Warning System *****report (****http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2005/1283/****)**

**Notes:**
This is a key example of how partnerships with other agencies benefit society. The NOAA-USGS Flash Flood and Debris Flow Warning System Pilot Project links National Weather Service expertise in precipitation forecasting and measurement and USGS experience with post-fire debris-flow events.

Once the smoke clears from a wildfire, the danger is not over. Flash floods and debris flows—or mudflows—can be one of the most hazardous consequences of rainfall on burned hill slopes. Just a small amount of rainfall on a burned area can lead to these hazards. The powerful force of rushing water, soil, and rock, both within the burned area and downstream, can destroy culverts, bridges, roadways, and structures, and can result in injury or death. The U.S. Geological Landslides Hazards Program strives to reduce loss of life and property to landslide hazards through improved understanding and effective mitigation. 
Watches: Issued when rain forecasts indicate an increased risk of an event
Warnings: Issued when rain forecasts indicate that an event is imminent. The detailed warning maps in real time is something we are striving for – not there yet.

## Relationship of Landslides with Other Natural Hazards

**Relationship of Landslides with Other Natural Hazards**

**Flooding**
**Tsunamis**
**Hurricanes and Storm Surges**
**Volcanic Activity**
**Earthquakes**

**Notes:**
How do landslides cause tsunamis? Tsunamis are large, potentially destructive sea waves, most of which are formed as a result of submarine earthquakes, but which may also result from the eruption or collapse of island or coastal volcanoes and the formation of giant landslides on marine margins.  These landslides, in turn, are often triggered by earthquakes.  Environmental damage by these tsunamis include coral reef destruction, contamination of wells and other sources of fresh water by salt water, denudation of trees and other types of dry-land vegetation, accelerated beach erosion, and fish and other marine life fatalities due to abnormal wave action.  The flooding and powerful wave action of the tsunami may potentially cause damage to man-made containment vessels of petroleum products, chemicals, and garbage landfills, resulting in toxic leakage, which in turn has the potential to pollute both coastal land and ocean environment. 
Tsunami waves can be generated from displacements of water resulting from rock falls, icefalls and sudden submarine landslides or slumps.  Major earthquakes are suspected to cause many underwater landslides, which may contribute significantly to tsunami generation.  For example, many scientists believe that the 1998 tsunami , which killed thousands of people and destroyed coastal villages along the northern coast of Papua-New Guinea, was generated by a large underwater slump of sediments, triggered by an earthquake
The 1964 Alaska earthquake caused 115 deaths in Alaska alone, with 106 of these due to tsunamis which were generated by tectonic uplift of the sea floor, and by localized subareal and submarine landslides. The earthquake shaking caused at least 5 local slide generated tsunamis within minutes after the shaking began.
Current research in the Canary Islands concludes that there have been at least five massive volcano landslides that occurred in the past, and that these same large events may occur in the future.  These giant landslides have the potential of generating large tsunami waves, at close and also very great distances and would have the potential to devastate large areas of coastal land, as far away as the eastern seaboard of North America.
Rock falls and rock avalanches in coastal inlets, such as those that have occurred in the past at Tidal Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska have the potential to cause regional tsunamis, that pose a hazard to coastal ecosystems and human settlements.  On July 9, 1958, a magnitude M 7.9 earthquake on the Fairweather Fault triggered a rock avalanche at the head of Lituya Bay, Alaska.  The landslide generated a wave that ran up 524 m on the opposite shore and sent a 30-m high wave through Lituya Bay sinking two of three fishing boats and killing two persons.

## Future Landslide Science Endeavors

**Future Landslide Science Endeavors**

**Forecast**
**Improve and Expand Monitoring**
**Early Warning**

**Notes:**
Develop new predictive models to analyze the potential for large, deep landslides in areas from coastal bluffs to volcanoes;
Improve and expand monitoring techniques in active landslide environments for better prediction and forecasting;
Advance existing models for rainfall infiltration and existing slope instability to forecast debris flows;
Develop methods that predict the probability, magnitude, and area of impact of debris flows generated from recently burned areas;
Advance the NOAA-USGS prototype flash flood and debris flow early warning system.

## If we can use science to help save lives and minimize the damage caused by natural hazards, the USGS will have achieved an enormous goal – helping to prevent natural hazards from becoming disasters and helping to build safer, more resilient communities worldwide.

**Natural Hazards Science – ****A Matter of Worldwide Public Safety**