Accuracy Assessment of the Global Landslide Catalog

Rainfall-triggered landslides cause damages and casualties across the globe. NASA's Global Landslide Catalog (GLC) organizes a record of landslide events from media reports, academic journal articles, and existing databases at global scale. The database represents a minimum number of mass movement events such as landslides, mudslides, and rockfalls triggered by rainfall and is complete from 2007 - 2018. This research assesses the accuracy of landslide reports in the GLC. Specifically, the information in the "Landslide Setting" and "Landslide Trigger" attributes is verified against global datasets for road networks, streams, and land cover. Precipitation data is also used to verify the triggering mechanism and validate the "Storm Name" field where applicable. A random sample of GLC events are chosen for a manual review of the accuracy of various attributes such as date and time of occurrence, triggering factor, event type, relative size of event, injuries and deaths, economic impact, and the geographic location that are reported for the selected events. Additionally, this research compares the GLC to solitary landslides reported in literature and several landslide inventories collected via varying methods to observe potential underreporting temporally and geographically. This assessment will guide users of the GLC and may improve future landslide inventories.