Landslides in Australia

Geoscience Australia has just released a simple mapping application that allows members of the public to search the internal landslide database for events that have occurred across Australia since 1842. A landslide consists of one or more related “landslips”. Since landslips are a naturally occurring phenomenon, they are difficult to predict and can often occur suddenly without any witnesses. This makes it difficult to determine some of the properties of a landslip, such as the triggering and contributing factors, and when exactly it occurred. Subsequently, landslip event details are sometimes incomplete as the information could not be determined. This is particularly true for historical records.

The Landslide Search application is intended to raise public awareness about this particular type of natural hazard in Australia. Users can customise search according to location, time or impact of the event, and view the results on a map and in an expandable table.