About this Scenario: Landslide Hazard Mapping
Background
Landslides are a significant natural hazard with the potential to cause severe social, economic, and environmental impacts. While it is possible to identify areas with high susceptibility to landslides, a distinction must be made between hazard—the probability of occurrence—and risk, which arises when vulnerable elements such as people, infrastructure, or economic assets are exposed to these events.
In the Dominican Republic, landslides represent a recurrent threat, particularly in regions with complex topography, variable precipitation, and seismic activity. This scenario provides a high-resolution landslide hazard map (30x30 meters) for the entire study area, supporting anticipatory action and informed risk management.
How to Use this Scenario
The Landslide Hazard Mapping scenario provides an interactive map where users can explore landslide hazard levels and related risk components across the study area.
You can select and visualize the following layers:
- Landslide Hazard: view the integrated landslide hazard index derived from rainfall and seismic triggering factors.
- IPCC Climate Scenario: select different IPCC scenarios to explore how projected changes in precipitation may affect landslide hazard levels.
- Population Exposure: visualize population density in relation to hazard zones.
- Vulnerability: display the combined vulnerability index based on IVACC and ICV data.
- Elevation: explore the topography of the study area.
Use the layer selection menu to toggle layers on or off and interact with the map. The scenario supports zooming and panning to analyze specific areas of interest.
About the Scenario
The landslide hazard map in this scenario has been developed using a multi-criteria analysis approach based on the methodology proposed by Jaedicke et al. (2014) and the International Centre for Geohazards (ICG) model. This method integrates a range of susceptibility and triggering factors to estimate the potential for landslide occurrence across the study area.
Key factors incorporated into the analysis include:
- Topography: slope derived from the Copernicus GLO-30 Digital Elevation Model.
- Geology: lithological data from the Mapa Geológico Nacional of the Dominican Republic, reclassified based on landslide occurrence statistics.
- Land Cover: ESA WorldCover 2021 product, representing vegetation and land use characteristics relevant to slope stability.
- Precipitation: extreme rainfall estimates from ERA5-Land reanalysis, including current and future projections based on IPCC climate scenarios.
- Seismicity: Peak Ground Acceleration data from the GEM Global Seismic Hazard Map (2023), adapted to match the classification of the reference model.
Given the absence of a sufficiently complete and consistent historical landslide inventory for machine learning approaches, the project employs this expert-driven multi-criteria framework to ensure robustness and transferability of the hazard mapping process.
The hazard is computed for both rainfall-induced and earthquake-induced landslides. In this scenario, the two hazard components are combined to provide an integrated landslide hazard index, supporting a holistic assessment of landslide potential across the territory.
Exposure Analysis
Exposure refers to the presence of people, property, infrastructure, and other assets in areas subject to landslide hazards. This component is essential to translate hazard into actionable risk information.
For this scenario, population exposure is characterized using the High Resolution Population Density Maps + Demographic Estimates (2018) produced by META and hosted on the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) platform. The data provides 30-meter resolution raster layers representing population density across the Dominican Republic.
A 200-meter buffer zone is applied around populated areas to account for natural human mobility around settlements. This ensures a more realistic estimation of population potentially exposed to landslide hazards.
Vulnerability Analysis
Vulnerability captures the susceptibility of exposed elements to suffer adverse effects when impacted by landslides. It reflects both physical characteristics and socio-economic conditions that influence a population’s ability to anticipate, cope with, and recover from such events.
Two key datasets from the SIUBEN system of the Dominican Republic are used to characterize vulnerability:
- IVACC (Índice de Vulnerabilidad ante Choques Climáticos): a vulnerability index to climate shocks, integrating building characteristics, economic income, and proximity to rivers to assess household vulnerability to climatic hazards.
- ICV (Índice de Calidad de Vida): a Quality of Life Index, segmenting households into four socio-economic categories (ICV_1 to ICV_4), from lower to higher economic levels.
These datasets are combined into a single vulnerability indicator for each area. The lower categories of ICV (ICV_1 and ICV_2) are merged with households classified as "high vulnerability" in IVACC. Similarly, ICV_3 is combined with "medium vulnerability", and ICV_4 with "low vulnerability". This approach enables a consolidated vulnerability layer aligned with the hazard and exposure data, supporting comprehensive landslide risk assessment.
Topography
The topography of the study area is derived from the Copernicus GLO-30 Digital Elevation Model.
Objective
The objective of this scenario is to demonstrate how a high-resolution landslide risk mapping system can be built by integrating Earth Observation data with population, exposure, and vulnerability information.
The scenario provides actionable insights to support anticipatory humanitarian action, infrastructure protection, and targeted mitigation strategies in the Dominican Republic. By combining hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, this approach offers a comprehensive perspective on landslide risk to inform decision-making.
Credits
All of the displayed basemaps are provided by © MapTiler © OpenStreetMap contributors