Landslide Risk Management Proceedings of the International Conference on Landslide Risk Management, Vancouver, Canada, 31 May - 3 June 2005

__Landslide Risk Management__ comprises the proceedings of the International Conference on Landslide Risk Management, held in Vancouver, Canada, from May 31 to June 3, 2005. The first part of the book contains state-of-the-art and invited lectures, prepared by teams of authors selected for their experience in specific topics assigned to them by the JTC-1 Committee. The second part is a selection of papers submitted to the conference, most of which serve as case-history illustrations of projects on landslide risk management. This reference work presents the current status of landslide risk management as viewed by experts from around the world. Landslides rank behind earthquakes and droughts on the scale of destructiveness. Nevertheless, they represent a major type of natural hazard that extracts a steady, painful toll from inhabitants of mountains, hilly regions, escarpments and river valleys around the world. The impact of landslides is sudden and erratic in time and reliable warnings are difficult to implement. It is highly focused in area and this allows an opportunity for proactive defense, by outlining the hazard areas beforehand and estimating the hazards and risks. The benefits of rationally-planned pro-active defense are twofold. On one hand, it saves lives and property when an impact occurs. On the other hand, it prevents excessive expenses that are often incurred by governments in futile attempts to rectify a critical situation after damage has happened. Either goal requires that landslide hazards and risks be reliably and accurately characterized before they occur. This is a considerable challenge, primarily to the applied geoscience professionals who specialize in this field Landslide Risk Management comprises the Proceedings of the International Conference on Landslide Risk Management, held in Vancouver, May 31 to June 3, 2005. It contains state-of-the-art and invited lectures. as well as a selection of papers submitted to the conference, most of which serve as case history illustrations of projects on landslide risk management. Comprises the proceedings of the International Conference on Landslide Risk Management, held in Vancouver, Canada. This book contains invited lectures, prepared by teams of authors, as well as papers submitted to the conference that serve as case history illustrations of projects on landslide risk management.