Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 16, 311–331, 2016 www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/16/311/2016/ doi:10.5194/nhess-16-311-2016 © Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Assessment of physical vulnerability of buildings and analysis of landslide risk at the municipal scale: application to the Loures municipality, Portugal C. Guillard-Gonçalves, J. L. Zêzere, S. Pereira, and R. A. C. Garcia RISKam, CEG, Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal Correspondence to: C. Guillard-Gonçalves (
[email protected]) Received: 5 August 2015 – Published in Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 10 September 2015 Revised: 28 December 2015 – Accepted: 13 January 2016 – Published: 3 February 2016 Abstract. This study offers a semi-quantitative assessment 1 Introduction of the physical vulnerability of buildings to landslides in a Portuguese municipality (Loures), as well as the quantita- Landslides are natural phenomena that can cause costly dam- tive landslide risk analysis computed as the product of the age when occurring in or impacting constructed areas. Land- landslide hazard by the vulnerability and the economic value slide risk analysis is used to estimate the risk of landslide of the buildings. The hazard was assessed by combining the hazard to individuals, populations, properties, or the envi- spatiotemporal probability and the frequency–magnitude re- ronment (Fell et al., 2008; Corominas et al., 2014, 2015) lationship of the landslides. The physical vulnerability as- and generally contains five main steps: (i) hazard identifi- sessment was based on an inquiry of a pool of European land- cation, (ii) hazard assessment, (iii) inventory of elements at slide experts and a sub-pool of landslide experts who know risk and exposure, (iv) vulnerability assessment, and (v) risk the study area, and the answers’ variability was assessed with estimation.