Longevity of landslide dams

The stability and longevity of landslide dams are central themes in hazard assessments. In this research, multiple regressions with various combinations of causative factors were adopted to evaluate the longevity of landslide dams, based on 65 landslide dam case studies in Japan. Statistical results indicated that the coefficient of determination for the statistical models was 0.249. This result is poor; however, when dams for rainfall- and earthquake-triggered landslides were separately evaluated as dummy variables, the coefficient of determination of the statistical model increased to 0.446. This result indicated that the triggering events and the geological/morphological characteristics should be considered to predict the longevity of landslide dams. Predicting the longevity of the landslide dams from a statistical approach remains challenging because the influence of triggering event magnitude is difficult to evaluate and consider in predictive models. .