ABSTRACT
Landslides are caused primarily by prolonged heavy rainfall on saturated hill slopes or triggered by earthquakes (Baum et al. 2002). Rain-induced landslides rank among the most devastating natural disasters, causing billions of dollars in property damages and thousands of deaths in most years around the world. In the United States alone, landslides can occur in every state, causing an estimated $2 billion in damage and 25 to 50 deaths each year (USGS 2006). Annual average loss of life from landslide hazards in Japan is more than 100 (Sidle and Ochiai 2006). The situation is much worse in developing countries and remote mountainous regions due to lack of žnancial resources and inadequate disaster prevention capacity. For example, Hurricane Mitch
9.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 191 9.2 A Conceptual Framework ............................................................................. 193 9.3 The Dynamic Trigger: Spaceborne Real-Time Rainfall Estimation ............ 194
9.3.1 Rainfall and Landslides .................................................................... 194 9.3.2 Satellite-Based Rainfall Intensity-Duration Threshold ................... 196
9.4 Creation of Global Landslide Susceptibility Map ........................................ 197 9.4.1 The Global Lands Surface Datasets ................................................. 197
9.4.1.1 Digital Elevation Model Data and Its Derivatives ............. 197 9.4.1.2 Land Cover Data ................................................................ 197 9.4.1.3 FAO Digital Soil Map and Soil Characteristics ................. 198 9.4.1.4 International Satellite Land Surface Climatology Project .... 198
9.4.2 The Global Landslide Susceptibility Map ........................................ 198 9.5 A Prototype Landslide Early Warning System ............................................200
