In Portugal, social impacts caused by floods and landslides in the last 150 years were gathered i... more In Portugal, social impacts caused by floods and landslides in the last 150 years were gathered in the DISASTER database. The mortality patterns of the hydro-geomorphological (HG) disasters were recently explored at the national scale, but the analysis was not expanded to more detailed scales. In the present work we explore the mortality caused by HG disasters in the municipalities of the Great Lisbon area. The main objectives of this work are: (i) the spatio-temporal analysis of hydro-geomorphological disasters occurred in the last 150 years on the Great Lisbon area; (ii) the analysis of the frequency and the temporal evolution of fatal floods and landslides; (iii) the analysis of the spatio-temporal distribution of fatalities; (iv) the verification of gender tendencies in mortalities; and (v) the evaluation of individual and societal risk. Individual risk is evaluated computing mortality rates for floods and landslides, which are calculated based on the annual average population a...
In Portugal, social impacts caused by landslides occurred in the period 1865-2015 are gathered in... more In Portugal, social impacts caused by landslides occurred in the period 1865-2015 are gathered in the DISASTER database. This database includes social consequences (fatalities, injuries, missing people, evacuated people and homeless people) caused by landslides documented in newspapers. The DISASTER database contains 291 damaging landslides that caused 238 fatalities. In this work we aim to: (i) analyse the spatio-temporal analysis of damaging landslides occurred in the last 150 years; (ii) analyse the frequency and the temporal evolution of fatal landslides; (iii) analyse the spatio-temporal distribution of landslide fatalities; (iv) identify the most deadly landside types; (v) verify gender tendencies in landslide mortality; and (vi) evaluate the individual and societal risk. Individual risk is evaluated computing mortality rates for landslides, which are calculated based on the annual average population and the annual average of fatalities. The societal risk is evaluated by plotting the annual frequency of landslide cases that generated fatalities. The results demonstrate the absence of any exponential growth in time of both landslide cases and landslide mortality in Portugal. The highest number of landslide cases and related mortalities occurred in the period of 1935-1969 in relation to very wet years. Most of landslide fatalities mainly occurred in the north of the Tagus valley where the geologic and geomorphologic conditions are more prone to landslides. The Lisbon area registered a mortality hotspot, which is explained by natural conditions combined with the high exposure of population to landslide risk. Falls and flows were responsible for the highest number of fatalities associated with landslides. Males were found to have the highest frequency of fatalities. In conclusion, the spatial patterns of landslide mortality can be related to the unequal distribution of predisposing conditions to landslides, changes in the land use and exposure and social vulnerability to landslide hazards.
The record and analysis of statistical information on disaster occurrence, impacts and losses hav... more The record and analysis of statistical information on disaster occurrence, impacts and losses have been made worldwide in recent years. The development of natural disasters databases is crucial for risk management purposes, because it allows improving systems of indicators on disaster risk and vulnerability at national and sub-national scales. During the last century, Portugal was affected by several destructive natural disasters, namely of hydrologic (floods) and geomorphologic (landslides) origin. However, only recently risk prevention and management was assumed to be a national priority by the Portuguese Government. The basic information on past floods and landslides that occurred in Portugal is disperse and incomplete, and this is a shortcoming for the implementation of effective disaster mitigation measures, particularly when it is expectable an increase of frequency, magnitude, dimension and complexity of the hydro-geomorphologic phenomena resulting from climate change. In this work we present a preliminary assessment of hydro-geomorphologic disasters occurred in Portugal during the 20th century, based on the systematic survey of daily national newspapers. We included into a database those floods and landslides that produced, alternatively, dead people, injured people, missing people, evacuated and homeless. A total of 937 hydro-geomorphologic events were registered. In addition to physical and material damages, these events produced economic losses amounting to millions Euros. Our attention will focus on the geographic distribution and the temporal dimension of disastrous floods and landslides occurred in Portugal, and the temporal trends of hydro-geomorphologic disasters will be presented. The preliminary results shown that disastrous floods and landslides have been more frequent on the most populated regions of Portugal: the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Oporto. In addition, data shows that disastrous hydrologic and geomorphologic phenomena were more frequent from 1940 to 1970, and there is no evidence of a clear increment in time both in the number of disastrous events and the number of associated death people. Finally, we assess the societal risk regarding landslides and floods in Portugal through the construction of F-N curves.
ABSTRACT This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the ... more ABSTRACT This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the period 1900–2010. NPLD was compiled from press releases (regional and local newspapers) and technical reports (reports by civil protection authorities and academic works); it includes 628 landslides, corresponding to 5.7 landslides per year on average. Although 50% of landslides occurred in the last 35 years of the series, the temporal distribution of landslides does not show any regular increase with time. The relationship between annual precipitation and landslide occurrence shows that reported landslides tend to be more frequent in wetter years. Moreover, landslides occur mostly in the wettest months of the year (December, January and February), which reflects the importance of rainfall in triggering slope instability. Most landslides cause damage that affects people and/or structures; 69.4% of the landslides in Northern Portugal caused 136 fatalities, 173 injured and left 460 persons homeless. More than half of the total landslides (321 landslides) led to railway or motorway closures and 49 landslides destroyed 126 buildings. The NPLD is compared with a landslide database for the whole of Portugal constructed from a single daily national newspaper covering the same reference period. It will be demonstrated that the regional and local newspapers are more effective than the national newspaper in reporting damaging landslides in the North of Portugal. Like other documentary-based landslide inventories, the NPLD does not accurately report non-damaging landslides. Therefore, NPLD was found unsuitable to validate municipal-scale landslide susceptibility models derived from detailed geomorphology-based landslide inventories.
Resumen: En el siglo XX Portugal continental se vio afectado por varios desastres naturales de or... more Resumen: En el siglo XX Portugal continental se vio afectado por varios desastres naturales de origen hidro-geomorfologico con altos niveles de destrucción. El proyecto DISASTER tiene como objetivo crear una base de datos hidro-geomorfológicos, consistente y validada, mediante la creación, difusión y explotación de una base de datos en SIG sobre inundaciones y deslizamientos de terreno catastróficos, cubriendo un periodo desde 1865 hasta la actualidad. Se han utilizado como fuentes, periódicos nacionales, regionales y locales. Cualquier evento hidro-geomorfológico se almacena en la base de datos si ha provocado víctimas, heridos, desaparecidos y evacuados o personas sin hogar, independientemente del número de personas afectadas y del valor de los daños y perjuicios. La base de datos se divide en dos partes: (i) las características de los hechos y (ii) los daños y perjuicios. Estos datos permitirán una mejor comprensión de las dimensiones espaciales y temporales de los desastres hidr...
ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorp... more ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorphologic origin that often caused high levels of destruction. However, data on past events related to floods and landslides were scattered. The Disaster project aims to bridge the gap on the availability of a consistent and validated hydro-geomorphologic database for Portugal, by creating, disseminating and exploiting a GIS database on disastrous floods and landslides for the period 1865–2010, which is available in http://riskam.ul.pt/disaster/en. Data collection is steered by the concept of disaster used within the Disaster project. Therefore, any hydro-geomorphologic case is stored in the database if the occurrence led to casualties or injuries, and missing, evacuated or homeless people, independently of the number of people affected. The sources of information are 16 national, regional and local newspapers that implied the analysis of 145,344 individual newspapers. The hydro-geomorphologic occurrences were stored in a database containing two major parts: the characteristics of the hydro-geomorphologic case and the corresponding damages. In this work, the main results of the Disaster database are presented. A total of 1,621 disastrous floods and 281 disastrous landslides were recorded and registered in the database. These occurrences were responsible for 1,251 dead people. The obtained results do not support the existence of any exponential increase in events in time, thus contrasting with the picture provided to Portugal by the Emergency Events Database. Floods were more frequent during the period 1936–1967 and occurred mostly from November to February. Landslides were more frequent in the period 1947–1969 and occurred mostly from December to March.
Hydro-geomorphological events are the natural hazards that most affect Portugal. Under the DISAST... more Hydro-geomorphological events are the natural hazards that most affect Portugal. Under the DISASTER research project, was created a GIS database (DB) about floods and landslides that occurred in this country, from 1865 to 2010. The inventory of these processes was based on a systematic compilation of national and regional newspapers articles, focusing occurrences with direct consequences on the population, i.e. those that implied killed, injured, missing, evacuated or displaced people, independently of the number of affected and the economic value of damage. The main objective of this DB is to support the development of risk studies related with these events, analysing their spatial and temporal distribution, the susceptibility of the territories and the vulnerability of the exposed elements. It is essential for risk management, providing a decision support for spatial and emergency planning. This study aims to analyse the temporal rhythm of floods and landslides that occurred in the above mentioned period, as well as its evolutionary trend and the relationship between these processes and the precipitation, the main triggering factor of hydro-geomorphological events in Portugal mainland. The trends are analysed using the nonparametric Mann-Kendall (M-K) and Theil-Sen statistical tests (B), in order to estimate its magnitude. The results show that from the 1903 records integrated in the Disaster DB (in the 145 years under analysis), 85.2% of occurrences correspond to floods and 14.8% to landslides. Until 1935 the number of occurrences per year is less than 10 (except 1909), but after this date there was a significant increase of this value, mainly in the years of 1936, 1966/67, 1979, 1996 and 2001, with more than 50 occurrences/year. In the period between 1935 and 1975, the mean number of occurrences is 22.5/year, but between 1975-2010 it changes to 16.5. The results suggest the absence of a statistically significant increasing trend of occurrences, during all the analysed period. Instead, these processes seem to report a cyclical behaviour considering different time scales, evidenced also by the precipitation data, highlighting the period from 1935 to 1975, with the highest number of occurrences. In fact, the mean annual precipitation (MAP) and mean daily intensity (MDI) variables also seem to reveal a cyclic trend, corresponding the years with the highest number of occurrences to those with higher MAP and MDI values, although more prominent in the latter one (except in 1909), evidencing the influence that precipitation has on the floods and landslide processes.
ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorp... more ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorphologic origin that often caused high levels of destruction. However, data on past events related to floods and landslides were scattered. The Disaster project aims to bridge the gap on the availability of a consistent and validated hydro-geomorphologic database for Portugal, by creating, disseminating and exploiting a GIS database on disastrous floods and landslides for the period 1865–2010, which is available in http://riskam.ul.pt/disaster/en. Data collection is steered by the concept of disaster used within the Disaster project. Therefore, any hydro-geomorphologic case is stored in the database if the occurrence led to casualties or injuries, and missing, evacuated or homeless people, independently of the number of people affected. The sources of information are 16 national, regional and local newspapers that implied the analysis of 145,344 individual newspapers. The hydro-geomorphologic occurrences were stored in a database containing two major parts: the characteristics of the hydro-geomorphologic case and the corresponding damages. In this work, the main results of the Disaster database are presented. A total of 1,621 disastrous floods and 281 disastrous landslides were recorded and registered in the database. These occurrences were responsible for 1,251 dead people. The obtained results do not support the existence of any exponential increase in events in time, thus contrasting with the picture provided to Portugal by the Emergency Events Database. Floods were more frequent during the period 1936–1967 and occurred mostly from November to February. Landslides were more frequent in the period 1947–1969 and occurred mostly from December to March.
This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the period 19... more This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the period 1900-2010. NPLD was compiled from press releases (regional and local newspapers) and technical reports (reports by civil protection authorities and academic works); it includes 628 landslides, corresponding to 5.7 landslides per year on average. Although 50% of landslides occurred in the last 35 years of the series, the temporal distribution of landslides does not show any regular increase with time. The relationship between annual precipitation and landslide occurrence shows that reported landslides tend to be more frequent in wetter years. Moreover, landslides occur mostly in the wettest months of the year (December, January and February), which reflects the importance of rainfall in triggering slope instability. Most landslides cause damage that affects people and/or structures; 69.4% of the landslides in Northern Portugal caused 136 fatalities, 173 injured and left 460 persons homeless. More than half of the total landslides (321 landslides) led to railway or motorway closures and 49 landslides destroyed 126 buildings. The NPLD is compared with a landslide database for the whole of Portugal constructed from a single daily national newspaper covering the same reference period. It will be demonstrated that the regional and local newspapers are more effective than the national newspaper in reporting damaging landslides in the North of Portugal. Like other documentary-based landslide inventories, the NPLD does not accurately report non-damaging landslides. Therefore, NPLD was found unsuitable to validate municipal-scale landslide susceptibility models derived from detailed geomorphology-based landslide inventories.
In Portugal, social impacts caused by floods and landslides in the last 150 years were gathered i... more In Portugal, social impacts caused by floods and landslides in the last 150 years were gathered in the DISASTER database. The mortality patterns of the hydro-geomorphological (HG) disasters were recently explored at the national scale, but the analysis was not expanded to more detailed scales. In the present work we explore the mortality caused by HG disasters in the municipalities of the Great Lisbon area. The main objectives of this work are: (i) the spatio-temporal analysis of hydro-geomorphological disasters occurred in the last 150 years on the Great Lisbon area; (ii) the analysis of the frequency and the temporal evolution of fatal floods and landslides; (iii) the analysis of the spatio-temporal distribution of fatalities; (iv) the verification of gender tendencies in mortalities; and (v) the evaluation of individual and societal risk. Individual risk is evaluated computing mortality rates for floods and landslides, which are calculated based on the annual average population a...
In Portugal, social impacts caused by landslides occurred in the period 1865-2015 are gathered in... more In Portugal, social impacts caused by landslides occurred in the period 1865-2015 are gathered in the DISASTER database. This database includes social consequences (fatalities, injuries, missing people, evacuated people and homeless people) caused by landslides documented in newspapers. The DISASTER database contains 291 damaging landslides that caused 238 fatalities. In this work we aim to: (i) analyse the spatio-temporal analysis of damaging landslides occurred in the last 150 years; (ii) analyse the frequency and the temporal evolution of fatal landslides; (iii) analyse the spatio-temporal distribution of landslide fatalities; (iv) identify the most deadly landside types; (v) verify gender tendencies in landslide mortality; and (vi) evaluate the individual and societal risk. Individual risk is evaluated computing mortality rates for landslides, which are calculated based on the annual average population and the annual average of fatalities. The societal risk is evaluated by plotting the annual frequency of landslide cases that generated fatalities. The results demonstrate the absence of any exponential growth in time of both landslide cases and landslide mortality in Portugal. The highest number of landslide cases and related mortalities occurred in the period of 1935-1969 in relation to very wet years. Most of landslide fatalities mainly occurred in the north of the Tagus valley where the geologic and geomorphologic conditions are more prone to landslides. The Lisbon area registered a mortality hotspot, which is explained by natural conditions combined with the high exposure of population to landslide risk. Falls and flows were responsible for the highest number of fatalities associated with landslides. Males were found to have the highest frequency of fatalities. In conclusion, the spatial patterns of landslide mortality can be related to the unequal distribution of predisposing conditions to landslides, changes in the land use and exposure and social vulnerability to landslide hazards.
The record and analysis of statistical information on disaster occurrence, impacts and losses hav... more The record and analysis of statistical information on disaster occurrence, impacts and losses have been made worldwide in recent years. The development of natural disasters databases is crucial for risk management purposes, because it allows improving systems of indicators on disaster risk and vulnerability at national and sub-national scales. During the last century, Portugal was affected by several destructive natural disasters, namely of hydrologic (floods) and geomorphologic (landslides) origin. However, only recently risk prevention and management was assumed to be a national priority by the Portuguese Government. The basic information on past floods and landslides that occurred in Portugal is disperse and incomplete, and this is a shortcoming for the implementation of effective disaster mitigation measures, particularly when it is expectable an increase of frequency, magnitude, dimension and complexity of the hydro-geomorphologic phenomena resulting from climate change. In this work we present a preliminary assessment of hydro-geomorphologic disasters occurred in Portugal during the 20th century, based on the systematic survey of daily national newspapers. We included into a database those floods and landslides that produced, alternatively, dead people, injured people, missing people, evacuated and homeless. A total of 937 hydro-geomorphologic events were registered. In addition to physical and material damages, these events produced economic losses amounting to millions Euros. Our attention will focus on the geographic distribution and the temporal dimension of disastrous floods and landslides occurred in Portugal, and the temporal trends of hydro-geomorphologic disasters will be presented. The preliminary results shown that disastrous floods and landslides have been more frequent on the most populated regions of Portugal: the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Oporto. In addition, data shows that disastrous hydrologic and geomorphologic phenomena were more frequent from 1940 to 1970, and there is no evidence of a clear increment in time both in the number of disastrous events and the number of associated death people. Finally, we assess the societal risk regarding landslides and floods in Portugal through the construction of F-N curves.
ABSTRACT This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the ... more ABSTRACT This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the period 1900–2010. NPLD was compiled from press releases (regional and local newspapers) and technical reports (reports by civil protection authorities and academic works); it includes 628 landslides, corresponding to 5.7 landslides per year on average. Although 50% of landslides occurred in the last 35 years of the series, the temporal distribution of landslides does not show any regular increase with time. The relationship between annual precipitation and landslide occurrence shows that reported landslides tend to be more frequent in wetter years. Moreover, landslides occur mostly in the wettest months of the year (December, January and February), which reflects the importance of rainfall in triggering slope instability. Most landslides cause damage that affects people and/or structures; 69.4% of the landslides in Northern Portugal caused 136 fatalities, 173 injured and left 460 persons homeless. More than half of the total landslides (321 landslides) led to railway or motorway closures and 49 landslides destroyed 126 buildings. The NPLD is compared with a landslide database for the whole of Portugal constructed from a single daily national newspaper covering the same reference period. It will be demonstrated that the regional and local newspapers are more effective than the national newspaper in reporting damaging landslides in the North of Portugal. Like other documentary-based landslide inventories, the NPLD does not accurately report non-damaging landslides. Therefore, NPLD was found unsuitable to validate municipal-scale landslide susceptibility models derived from detailed geomorphology-based landslide inventories.
Resumen: En el siglo XX Portugal continental se vio afectado por varios desastres naturales de or... more Resumen: En el siglo XX Portugal continental se vio afectado por varios desastres naturales de origen hidro-geomorfologico con altos niveles de destrucción. El proyecto DISASTER tiene como objetivo crear una base de datos hidro-geomorfológicos, consistente y validada, mediante la creación, difusión y explotación de una base de datos en SIG sobre inundaciones y deslizamientos de terreno catastróficos, cubriendo un periodo desde 1865 hasta la actualidad. Se han utilizado como fuentes, periódicos nacionales, regionales y locales. Cualquier evento hidro-geomorfológico se almacena en la base de datos si ha provocado víctimas, heridos, desaparecidos y evacuados o personas sin hogar, independientemente del número de personas afectadas y del valor de los daños y perjuicios. La base de datos se divide en dos partes: (i) las características de los hechos y (ii) los daños y perjuicios. Estos datos permitirán una mejor comprensión de las dimensiones espaciales y temporales de los desastres hidr...
ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorp... more ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorphologic origin that often caused high levels of destruction. However, data on past events related to floods and landslides were scattered. The Disaster project aims to bridge the gap on the availability of a consistent and validated hydro-geomorphologic database for Portugal, by creating, disseminating and exploiting a GIS database on disastrous floods and landslides for the period 1865–2010, which is available in http://riskam.ul.pt/disaster/en. Data collection is steered by the concept of disaster used within the Disaster project. Therefore, any hydro-geomorphologic case is stored in the database if the occurrence led to casualties or injuries, and missing, evacuated or homeless people, independently of the number of people affected. The sources of information are 16 national, regional and local newspapers that implied the analysis of 145,344 individual newspapers. The hydro-geomorphologic occurrences were stored in a database containing two major parts: the characteristics of the hydro-geomorphologic case and the corresponding damages. In this work, the main results of the Disaster database are presented. A total of 1,621 disastrous floods and 281 disastrous landslides were recorded and registered in the database. These occurrences were responsible for 1,251 dead people. The obtained results do not support the existence of any exponential increase in events in time, thus contrasting with the picture provided to Portugal by the Emergency Events Database. Floods were more frequent during the period 1936–1967 and occurred mostly from November to February. Landslides were more frequent in the period 1947–1969 and occurred mostly from December to March.
Hydro-geomorphological events are the natural hazards that most affect Portugal. Under the DISAST... more Hydro-geomorphological events are the natural hazards that most affect Portugal. Under the DISASTER research project, was created a GIS database (DB) about floods and landslides that occurred in this country, from 1865 to 2010. The inventory of these processes was based on a systematic compilation of national and regional newspapers articles, focusing occurrences with direct consequences on the population, i.e. those that implied killed, injured, missing, evacuated or displaced people, independently of the number of affected and the economic value of damage. The main objective of this DB is to support the development of risk studies related with these events, analysing their spatial and temporal distribution, the susceptibility of the territories and the vulnerability of the exposed elements. It is essential for risk management, providing a decision support for spatial and emergency planning. This study aims to analyse the temporal rhythm of floods and landslides that occurred in the above mentioned period, as well as its evolutionary trend and the relationship between these processes and the precipitation, the main triggering factor of hydro-geomorphological events in Portugal mainland. The trends are analysed using the nonparametric Mann-Kendall (M-K) and Theil-Sen statistical tests (B), in order to estimate its magnitude. The results show that from the 1903 records integrated in the Disaster DB (in the 145 years under analysis), 85.2% of occurrences correspond to floods and 14.8% to landslides. Until 1935 the number of occurrences per year is less than 10 (except 1909), but after this date there was a significant increase of this value, mainly in the years of 1936, 1966/67, 1979, 1996 and 2001, with more than 50 occurrences/year. In the period between 1935 and 1975, the mean number of occurrences is 22.5/year, but between 1975-2010 it changes to 16.5. The results suggest the absence of a statistically significant increasing trend of occurrences, during all the analysed period. Instead, these processes seem to report a cyclical behaviour considering different time scales, evidenced also by the precipitation data, highlighting the period from 1935 to 1975, with the highest number of occurrences. In fact, the mean annual precipitation (MAP) and mean daily intensity (MDI) variables also seem to reveal a cyclic trend, corresponding the years with the highest number of occurrences to those with higher MAP and MDI values, although more prominent in the latter one (except in 1909), evidencing the influence that precipitation has on the floods and landslide processes.
ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorp... more ABSTRACT In the last century, Portugal was affected by several natural disasters of hydro-geomorphologic origin that often caused high levels of destruction. However, data on past events related to floods and landslides were scattered. The Disaster project aims to bridge the gap on the availability of a consistent and validated hydro-geomorphologic database for Portugal, by creating, disseminating and exploiting a GIS database on disastrous floods and landslides for the period 1865–2010, which is available in http://riskam.ul.pt/disaster/en. Data collection is steered by the concept of disaster used within the Disaster project. Therefore, any hydro-geomorphologic case is stored in the database if the occurrence led to casualties or injuries, and missing, evacuated or homeless people, independently of the number of people affected. The sources of information are 16 national, regional and local newspapers that implied the analysis of 145,344 individual newspapers. The hydro-geomorphologic occurrences were stored in a database containing two major parts: the characteristics of the hydro-geomorphologic case and the corresponding damages. In this work, the main results of the Disaster database are presented. A total of 1,621 disastrous floods and 281 disastrous landslides were recorded and registered in the database. These occurrences were responsible for 1,251 dead people. The obtained results do not support the existence of any exponential increase in events in time, thus contrasting with the picture provided to Portugal by the Emergency Events Database. Floods were more frequent during the period 1936–1967 and occurred mostly from November to February. Landslides were more frequent in the period 1947–1969 and occurred mostly from December to March.
This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the period 19... more This work presents and explores the Northern Portugal Landslide Database (NPLD) for the period 1900-2010. NPLD was compiled from press releases (regional and local newspapers) and technical reports (reports by civil protection authorities and academic works); it includes 628 landslides, corresponding to 5.7 landslides per year on average. Although 50% of landslides occurred in the last 35 years of the series, the temporal distribution of landslides does not show any regular increase with time. The relationship between annual precipitation and landslide occurrence shows that reported landslides tend to be more frequent in wetter years. Moreover, landslides occur mostly in the wettest months of the year (December, January and February), which reflects the importance of rainfall in triggering slope instability. Most landslides cause damage that affects people and/or structures; 69.4% of the landslides in Northern Portugal caused 136 fatalities, 173 injured and left 460 persons homeless. More than half of the total landslides (321 landslides) led to railway or motorway closures and 49 landslides destroyed 126 buildings. The NPLD is compared with a landslide database for the whole of Portugal constructed from a single daily national newspaper covering the same reference period. It will be demonstrated that the regional and local newspapers are more effective than the national newspaper in reporting damaging landslides in the North of Portugal. Like other documentary-based landslide inventories, the NPLD does not accurately report non-damaging landslides. Therefore, NPLD was found unsuitable to validate municipal-scale landslide susceptibility models derived from detailed geomorphology-based landslide inventories.
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