A review on spatial, temporal and magnitude prediction of landslide hazard

Over the last few decades, several landslide susceptibility and hazard mapping (LSHM) techniques have been developed. Maps for the same region have also been generated by different individuals following dissimilar approaches, which can be grouped into qualitative, semi-quantitative and quantitative approaches. As all these techniques have their pros and cons, hence no one technique is standardized for effective analysis of landslide hazards. One issue is the inconsistency in adopting common terminologies for LSHM, that has unavoidably led to many misperceptions.

Many authors use susceptibility as a synonym of hazard in landslide zonation. However, Landslide Susceptibility Mapping (LSM) or spatial prediction is just one of the three components of Landslide Hazard Mapping (LHM). The other two components are temporal and magnitude prediction. Many authors have shown their concern regarding the use of hazard and susceptibility terms as synonyms, but none has reviewed those articles and classified them. We reviewed 367 articles from 1972 to 2021, out of which 236 articles were reviewed in detail to prepare a literature database. From the analysis and graphical visualizations of the database, we found the most commonly used techniques for LSHM. We identified a clear geographical biasness in susceptibility analysis. Also, we have found that about 15% of the articles have mistakenly considered susceptibility and hazard terms as synonyms of each other. It constitutes a guideline for future studies and applications, particularly for LSHM. The paper also aims at addressing the gaps in the conversion of susceptibility maps into true hazard and risk maps.