A review of landslide hazard and risk assessment methodology

Landslide hazard and risk assessment is a wide field, covered in recent years by very extensive literature. This review attempts to present a critical summary of some of the main contributions. The review concentrates on landslide susceptibility analysis and the prediction of landslide behaviour. It is concluded that a wide range of methods and underlying hypotheses exist, making it difficult to select a suitable approach to a given problem. The main finding of the review is that, notwithstanding the existence of very definite and sophisticated quantitative analyses, an important role continues to be played by subjective judgment. A balanced approach combining factual observations, judgment and analysis is recommended.