TITLE:
Thresholds of Instability: Precipitation, Landslides, and Early Warning Systems in Brazil
AUTHORS:
Maiconn Vinicius de Moraes, Luana Albertani Pampuch, Cassiano Antonio Bortolozo, Tatiana Sussel Gonçalves Mendes, Marcio Roberto Magalhães de Andrade, Daniel Metodiev, Tristan Pryer
KEYWORDS:
Cluster Analysis, Landslides, Environmental Thresholds, Rainfall, Brazil
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.14 No.10,
October
12,
2023
ABSTRACT: Rainfall accumulation thresholds are crucial for
issuing landslide warnings by identifying
when soil saturation from rain could potentially trigger a landslide. Two essential types of thresholds are considered:
environmental and operational. The environmental threshold indicates the
minimum rainfall level required to
potentially initiate a landslide. Conversely, the operational threshold
is set lower to enable agencies to issue alerts before reaching environmental thresholds. Establishing these thresholds
improves the accuracy of landslide predictions in terms of location and
timing. This study introduces an innovative approach for determining these
thresholds. Our approach employs cluster analysis and historical landslide data
from the Metropolitan Region of Recife, Pernambuco State, Brazil. We applied
our defined values to a significant landslide event in 2022, validating their
robustness as the foundation for the operational threshold used by Cemaden,
Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters.