Landslides pose a serious physical and environmental threat to vulnerable communities living in areas of unplanned housing on steep slopes in the Caribbean. Some of these communities have, in the past, had to be relocated, at costs of millions of dollars, because of major slides triggered by tropical storm rainfall. Even so, evidence shows that: (1) risk reduction is a marginal activity; (2) there has been minimal uptake of hazard maps and vulnerability assessments and (3) there is little on-the-ground delivery of construction for risk reduction. This article directly addresses these issues by developing a low-cost approach to the identification of the potential pore pressure changes that trigger such slides.
Examines the use of road network data as a proxy for interpreting population density, which is of use in regional-scale qualitative risk assessment for natural hazards. Compares the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia to Ontario and Quebec. Analysis of available high-resolution topographic data for Saint Lucia suggests similar trends, with expected population density in Saint Lucia roughly half that of Canada for the same road density.
