Landslides pose critical challenges to human lives and infrastructure across European diverse topographies. The paper “Pan‐European landslide risk assessment: From theory to practice” presents a comprehensive examination of landslide processes on a continental scale, highlighting both theoretical frameworks and practical applications. By uniting diverse landslide datasets from multiple national geological surveys, the authors compile over one million slope failure records. These data underscore how discrepancies in mapping practices can generate biases, thereby emphasizing the importance of robust statistical modelling.

A key methodological innovation lies in the use of slope units, which cluster terrain into geomorphologically meaningful subdivisions. This approach significantly refines susceptibility analyses, mitigating issues linked to irregular inventory quality. The authors fuse susceptibility data with exposure indices, quantifying elements such as buildings, farmland, and population distribution. Vulnerability - representing the potential damage to these elements - completes the framework, enabling risk estimation at the continental scale. Notably, the study accounts for variability in mapped landslide extents and leverages sophisticated statistical tools to address spatial biases.

The final findings depict Europe’s most landslide‐prone areas, along with estimates of annual economic losses under worst‐case vulnerability assumptions. Impacts on population are also explored, highlighting regions where people are at risk during both daytime and nighttime. To extend practical utility, the authors share an online interactive platform, allowing policymakers, urban planners, and the public to examine local landslide risk metrics.

Figure: The left panel shows the cartographic representation of expected economic losses across the European landscape. The right panel reports the distribution of losses for each mountain domain on a logarithmic scale.

Reference

Caleca F., Lombardo L., Steger S., Tanyas H., Raspini F., Dahal A., Nefros C., M?rg?rint M.C., Drouin V., Jemec-Aufli? M., Novellino A., Tonini M., Loche M., Casagli N., Tofani V. (2025) ‘Pan‐European landslide risk assessment: From theory to practice’, Reviews of Geophysics, 63, e2023RG000825. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023RG000825.

Contacts

Nicola Casagli (University of Florence, UNESCO Chair in Prevention and sustainable management of geo-hydrological hazards, Italy, Thematic Priority 2: Sediment-related Disaster Risk Reduction, WG Co-Leader)