NASA Landslide Reporter

Landslide Reporter
LANDSLIDES @ NASA

The Landslide
Reporter’s Guide

Add a
Landslide
Event to
COOLR
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Contents
This guide will walk you through the
steps for submitting a landslide
report to the Cooperative Open
Online Landslide Repository
(COOLR).
The guide contains:
• Tips for finding landslide events
• Choosing your Landslide Reporter
map and getting started
• Information about every field in the
Landslide Reporter form
• Reviewing/editing/deleting your
reports

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Tips for finding landslides
in person
Landslides occur most everywhere,
so you may encounter a landslide in
person along roads, riverbanks, or
any other steep slope.
First things first, make sure you are
a safe distance away from any landslide
you encounter. Even if a landslide has
happened, there is still the possibility of
falling rocks or unstable debris.

• Fresh landslides are best—ones
that have occurred right after a
triggering event like a storm, etc.
• Pictures are worth a thousand
words: take a photo of your
landslide and link to it in Landslide
Reporter from an image hosting
service like Flickr or Imgur
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Tips for finding landslides
online
• There are many resources that
report about landslides:
• Articles in your local newspaper
or an online news source
• Social media feeds like Twitter or
Facebook, using #hashtags or
following specific news sources
• Data entries in local databases
• Disaster and government
agencies
• Setting a Google News Alert will
alert you about new landslide
articles.
• Some keywords to get you started
on finding landslide events:
• Landslide; landslip; mudslide;
debris flow; rockslide; rockfall;
cliff collapse
• Searching in other languages
may help find other events.
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Choose your Map
There are two ways to add a report to
the database, depending on the
information you have about the slide:
points or polygons.

Points:
The location of
the landslide
can be defined
by a single point.

Polygons:
The location of
the landslide can
be defined by an
area.

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Get Started
Before you begin reporting:
• Do you have your news source
open/ do you have your landslide
notes in front of you?
• Do you have the location of the
landslide? How accurate is that
location?
Click “Submit a Landslide Report” to
begin your report!

General tips:
• Be as detailed as you can!
• Remember to include the source
information
• If you do not have information for a
section, leave it blank or select
“Unknown” from the dropdown box.
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Drawing the Location - 1
The application prompts you for the
location that the landslide originated
from on the map.
Jump to the location as best you can
using the search bar to find the
nearest place or coordinates. Click
on the option that best matches
what you’re looking for.
Click to choose
the coordinates
that match the
location.

Click to choose
the place that
matches the
location.
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Drawing the Location - 2
Define the approximate location with
a single point or with a polygon
shape outlining the area of the slide.
Point
• Click on the map where the
landslide occurred.
• To adjust the location, click another
location on the map.

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Drawing the Location - 3
Polygon
• Click on the map to begin drawing
the area of the landslide.
• Click to add more vertices to the
area’s shape. Double-click to close
the shape’s area.
• To start over and draw a new
shape, click another location on the
map.

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Name and Link of
Information Source
Provide the name and web URL (if
available) of the source you got the
event information from.
• If the source was a database or
media source, provide the name of
the database or media source.
• If the source was from your own
observation, put “in-person
observation” in the form and leave
the link blank.

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Event Date and Time
Provide the date and time that the
landslide occurred.
• If the date is not specified,
approximate the date as closely as
you can and add a comment that
you approximated the date in the
“Event Comments” section.
• If time is not specified, select “Time
not known”

Note: Event time
is the 24-hour
clock format
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Event Title
• Name given in media source: Name
the landslide as closely as you can
to the way it was referred to in the
source (unless the source does not
give it a clear name).
• If the landslide does not have a
name: Title the landslide with a
clear, unique description

Examples:
• State Highway 1 Mudslides at Milepost
35.49 near Davenport
• Snowmass Creek Rd Minor Mudslides, just
below bridge to Snowmass Ski Area
• O'Higgins Region Landslide Swept Away
Car in Chile
• Mid-Hill Highway Dry Landslide along the
Baglung-Burtibang Road

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Event Description
The event description should let
people know the who, what, when,
why of the landslide that has not
been explained in detail.
• Who/what was affected by the
landslide?
• What type of landslide was it?
• When did the landslide occur?
• Why did the landslide occur?

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Location Description
Location description is the detailed
account of where the landslide
occurred.
The space is autofilled with an
address or coordinates based on
where you clicked on the map.
Fill out additional details like you
were filling out an address to mail by
separating city, state, province,
country, etc. with commas.

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Location Accuracy
A radius of uncertainty in the
landslide’s location. The accuracy is
the radius of a circle, whose area is
where the landslide could have
possibly occurred.
Your location
accuracy, a radius
of uncertainty
(e.g. 1 km).

Your point (or
polygon) where
you report the
landslide occurred.
Your point/polygon and location
accuracy represent this shaded
area, which means the landslide is
likely to have occurred anywhere
inside this area.
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Landslide Category - 1
The type of landslide that occurred.
Use the dropdown menu to select
the best choice. If the event was a
mass movement more detail isn’t
provided, then select “landslide”
from the menu.
Use the following table and figure to
help categorize the landslide.

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Landslide Category - 2
Adapted from an abbreviated version of Varnes’
(1978) landslide classification. White boxes are
options in Landslide Reporter. (Source: USGS)
Type of material
Type of movement Bedrock

Engineering soils
Mostly fine Mostly coarse

Falls

Rock fall

Earth fall

Debris fall

Topples

Rock topple

Earth
topple

Debris topple

Rock slide

Debris slide Earth slide
(Landslide) (Landslide)

Rock spread

Earth
spread

Debris
spread

Rock flow

Earth flow
(Mudslide)

Debris flow

Rotational
Slides
Translational

Lateral spreads

Flows

Rock
avalanche
Deep creep

Complex and
compound

Debris
avalanche
Soil creep

Combination in time and/or space of two
or more principal types of movement

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Landslide Category - 3
Landslides as classified by the United States
Geological Survey (Source: USGS)

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Landslide Trigger
The cause of the landslide. Select
the best option from the dropdown
menu, or “unknown” if the cause
isn’t specified/can’t be inferred from
weather data.

During the 2017 Sierra Leone mudslide,
three days of torrential rain caused a
hillside in Freetown to collapse, killing
more than 1000 people. (Source: Reuters)
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Estimated Size - 1
The relative size of the landslide.
Use the table below to approximate
the size. Select “unknown” if no
information/photos are available.

Medium

Small

Descriptors

Volumes

Small landslide affecting one hillslope <10 cubic
or small area. Minimal impacts to
meters
infrastructure and roads. One road is
blocked, cleaned in a few hours; one
dump truck needed to clear the dirt;
usually no fatalities
Moderately sized landslide that could
be either a single event or multiple
landslides within an area, and
involves a large amount of material.
Road is blocked for multiple days;
multiple roads blocked; multiple
houses damaged; multiple dump
trucks needed to clear the dirt;
sometimes at least one fatality

10 to
<1000
cubic
meters

(table is continued on next page)
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Estimated Size - 2

Catastrophic Very Large

Large

The relative size of the landslide.
Use the table below to approximate
the size. Select “unknown” if no
information/photos are available.
Descriptors
Large landslide or series of landslides
that occur in one general area but
cover a wide area. Substantial
impacts to infrastructure and roads,
likely moderate to high number of
fatalities. Tens to hundreds of people
displaced.

Volumes
1000 to
<100,000
cubic
meters

Very large landslide or multiple events
that affect an entire region (often
encompassing an entire village).
Thousands of people may be
displaced, may be high numbers of
fatalities.

100,000 to
<1 million
cubic
meters

Catastrophic impacts to infrastructure ≥1 million
and roads. Multiple villages,
cubic
neighborhoods, towns buried. Tens of meters
thousands of people may be
displaced. May be hundreds to
thousands of fatalities.
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Landslide Setting
The type of environment in which the
landslide occurred.
This is important to know because
secondary factors like deforestation,
erosion, and human activity could
have contributed to the landslide.
An April 2016 landslide along the Karakoram
Highway in Chuchang, Pakistan caused by
heavy rain. Roads cut into the sides of
mountains may increase the chances of a
landslide. (Source: Wasif Shakil / AGU)

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Number of Fatalities and
Injuries
The number of people dead or
injured by the landslide event. This
includes people who died days after
sustaining an injury from a landslide.
If no deaths or injuries occurred, put
a zero in the form. If deaths or
injuries are unknown, then leave
blank.

Landslide events reported in the Eastern
Hemisphere by number of fatalities.
(Source: Landslide Viewer)
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Associated Storm Name
The name of the hurricane, typhoon,
tropical storm, or other storm that
caused the landslide.
If none, leave blank.

Preliminary map of landslide impacts (in red)
caused by Hurricane Maria in October 2017
in northwest Puerto Rico. (Source: USGS)

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Link to Photo
Insert a direct link to the photo. If
the photo comes from an online
source, right click to copy its image
address and paste in Landslide
Reporter.
The 2013 Kedarnath debris flow disaster
in Uttarakhand, India, which killed more
than 5000 people. (Source: AGU)

Did you take a photo? First upload
the photo to an image-hosting
platform (like Flickr or Imgur) and
then copy/paste the image address.
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Event Comments
Insert other details that you would
like the viewer to know about how
you wrote your landslide report.
For example, if you need to note the
date is estimated or if the
information source did not have a lot
of details about the event.
If there is nothing to comment, leave
blank.

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Imported Event Source
Catalog and Event Source ID
If you are submitting a landslide
from another database, Event
Source Catalog is the name of the
catalog/database you are importing
an event from.
Event Source ID is the ID of the
event in the source catalog.
If left blank, the Imported Event
Source Catalog will be automatically
filled in with ‘LRC’ or ‘GLC’,
depending on whether the landslide
event is reported through Landslide
Reporter (LRC = Landslide Reporter
Catalog) or by members of our NASA
team (GLC = Global Landslide
Catalog).

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Ready to Submit?
• Did you fill out the fields you could
fill out, and leave blank the ones
you couldn’t?
• Are all your event details as
descriptive as possible?
• The Event Date and Location
Description were automatically
filled. Make sure they’re accurate
to your event!
When you have made your report,
click the black “Report It” button.

You should receive confirmation that
the report has been received.

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Review Your Reports - 1
Your submissions appear on the
map as red points.
Review your submitted reports in the
menu in the tab “My Submissions”.

Web: click your
name in the top
right corner to
access the menu.

Mobile: click the
button in the top
right corner to
access the menu.

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Review Your Reports - 2
In My Submissions, you can see a
list of your previous submissions
that have not yet been approved yet.
Clicking on a report, you can review,
edit, or delete points.

Edit your
report
Delete your
report

View your report
on the map
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Finish and Next Steps
Congratulations,
you completed your
landslide report!
• Next, your report will be reviewed by
our team at NASA. If approved, it
will be added to COOLR.
• In the meantime, you can submit
more landslide reports or edit your
submitted reports.
Thanks to your help, we are one step
closer to completing our global
picture of landslides.

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Landslide Reporter
LANDSLIDES @ NASA
landslides.nasa.gov

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