Right now researchers are trying to set up better building codes to protects individuals from these land slides. They are also trying to ban the construction of buildings near any bodies of water where the ground is softer making land slides more likely to occur,
Here are a couple videos:
(The first one is in Spanish, but the images tell it all.)
This video here talks about how Costa Rica plans to prevent futute land slides with their Perrilla Module.
sources:
We Love Costa Rica
Tico Times
News.Co
Hi, Nick!
ReplyDeleteI really appreciated the videos you posted regrading landslides. The national tragedy that happened in Escazu is as the 2nd video showed, a totally preventable tragedy if the weather forecast had been followed and if the patterns of precipitation and huge rainfalls had been heeded. Based on these two indicators only, not to mention monitoring river levels, the population could have been evacuated.
In Romania, just like in Costa Rica, the landslides constitute a very common geomorphic hazard, being present mainly in the hilly regions which occupy around 30% of Romania's territory. tThus, this is so frequent. And unfortunately these regions are not the only ones to be affected by this geological phenomenon. Mountains too are affected by this in Romania, namely the Eastern Carpathians where slopes are frequently affected by landslides which have just as devastating an effect as in the hilly areas, the only difference being the lower concentration of population. The main factors for triggering landslides in Romania are said to be intense rainfall and poor forest management. I understood that in Costa Rica as well rainfalls are a triggering factor along with seismic activity...which I was not aware it could lead to landslides. Thanks for sharing this information...In Romania there looks to be a general lack of information about landslides coming from authorities who do not come forth with landslide inventory maps or have not identified high risk zones in their areas; however people seem to have more first hand information based on their experiences with landslides in the past and that is why they plant trees, fill up the racks in their houses with cement, etc. But overall, the authorities are not doing enough to warn local populations about landslide dangers, nor are they investing extensively in environmental monitoring. Landslides are a destructive phenomenon and they should be taken a lot more seriously, given that we have more control over this geological phenomenon, than, for instance, earthquakes. Thus, a lot more needs to be done at the local authorities level as well as at higher levels in order to approach land development more responsibly, better forest management and raising more awareness among local populations who live in areas prone to landslides, all in concert with monitoring rain patterns, drafting up to date landslide inventory maps and paying attention to historical records of landslides, putting in place alarm systems (sensors for slides, for example) and alarms for evacuation if the rainfall goes over a certain level, etc. There are a lot of things that we can do to better monitor our environment and better prepare people to respond to these geological phenomena.