POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS OF CITIZEN SCIENCE FOR LANDSLIDE HAZARD ASSESSMENT

Abstract. Landslide is perhaps one of the most complex natural phenomena and is quite common throughout the World. Before the human appearance on the World, it was only an earth surface process, whereas it became one of the most destructive natural hazards with the anthropogenic activities and the increase in human population. Landslides cause serious harmful and destructive effects on roads, railways, buildings, infrastructures, lifelines, quality of surface waters, etc. To reduce the losses caused by landslides, high quality landslide susceptibility and hazard maps are crucial. With the recent technological developments, the quality of regional landslide susceptibility and hazard assessments has been increased. Preparation of a complete landslide inventory map with accurate temporal dimension can be extremely difficult, or even impossible. Inaccurate and incomplete temporal landslide inventory maps result in serious uncertainties on the assessment results of regional landslide hazard. Therefore, lack of timely accurate data is the main source of problem affecting quality of the regional landslide assessments.
With the emerging developments in geospatial technologies, as well as the transforming power of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the society, it became possible to use the citizen science methods in scientific processes, which has enormous potential in landslide data collection and thus reduce the losses. The main aim of this review is to discuss the uncertainties lead by missing data and affecting quality of regional landslide assessments, and to describe the potential of citizen science to reduce the uncertainties. For this purpose, a brief review on the landslide susceptibility and hazard studies have been performed and the sources of uncertainties have been described. Finally, the role of citizen science is discussed with specific examples. As a final conclusion drawn from the present study, it is possible to say that citizen science may provide substantial contribution on the quality of regional landslide assessments.