Multi-scale landslide risk assessment in Cuba Enrique Armando Castellanos Abella International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, Enschede, The Netherlands ITC dissertation number 154 ITC, P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA Enschede, The Netherlands ISBN 978-90-6164-268-8 Cover designed by E.A.Castellanos Abella and Andries Menning Printed by ITC Printing Department Copyright © 2008 by Enrique Armando Castellanos Abella Multi-scale landslide risk assessment in Cuba Analyse van aardverschuivingrisico op meerdere schaalniveaus in Cuba (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. J.C. Stoof, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 30 september 2008 des middags te 2.30 uur door Enrique Armando Castellanos Abella geboren op 1 maart 1970 te Camagüey, Cuba Promotor: Professor Dr. S.M. de Jong Co-promotoren: Dr. C.J. van Westen Dr. Th. W.J. van Asch This doctoral dissertation was produced with the support of: International Institute for Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation, The Netherlands Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Cuba Centre for Management of Prioritized Programs and Projects, Cuba National Civil Defence, Cuba Leden promotiecommisie: Prof. Dr. T. Glade, University of Vienna, Austria Prof. Dr. F. Guzzetti, IRPI, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy Prof. Dr. J. Corominas, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain Prof. Dr. O. Maquaire, University of Caen-Basse Normandie, France Prof. Dr. V. Jetten, ITC, The Netherlands “Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them”, José Marti, National Hero of Cuba to my family Acknowledgements Many people were involved in the success of this research from the very beginning. Since at this moment it is difficult to memorize all of them, I would like to apologize for any person I forget to mention. I think is fair to start with the “professional” acknowledgements. Then, the most important are the promotor and supervisors: Steven, Theo and Cees who followed the entire process from the beginning. We were able to create a team and work together through all these years and they deserve my highest gratitude. I really appreciate all their contributions and patience, particularly to Cees with the daily supervision and trusting in me in not letting him down. Also all support I got from the organizations in Cuba was extremely useful: the Institute of Geology and Paleontology, the National Civil Defence, the Centre for Management of Prioritized Programs and Projects and the provincial and municipals authorities in Guantánamo province. Without mentioning all the names I would like to express my thankfulness to all colleagues in these organizations. They supplied required data, and coordination during fieldwork campaigns and in many cases contributed during the analysis. I am very grateful especially to Dr. Masry and Geerten Blessing for the loan of CARIS GIS. Nanette Kingma, Robert Voskuil and Dinand Alkema helped me in many parts of the research and I would like to express my thanks to them. Also let me thank a lot to Loes, Benno, Job and members of IT, FM and Students Affairs departments at ITC for all their support and efficiency. My deep gratitude goes also to the Marga, Carla and Petry of the library, for being available whenever I needed it. Numerous colleagues contributed in specific chapters. For chapter 3, related to disaster management and spatial data infrastructure, Ben Wisner, Kate Lance and Tatiana Delgado were of great support discussing many points that helped me a lot. Ramiro Reyes and Antonella Zucca assisted me in Chapter 4 for the national assessment with the SRTM data and the multi-criteria evaluation respectively. I thank Javier Martinez and Caterina Melchiorre who worked with me for Chapter 5 on vulnerability indicators and ANN processing. Part of Chapter 6 on municipal assessment was based on a long paper that was carefully reviewed by Richard Pike and Mauro Cardinali and I appreciate a lot their contribution. Road cost information was supplied by Javier Camargo which was very useful. Chapter 7 on local assessment had many contributors and I would like to thank all of them: Madelin Villalón collected data in the field that was very relevant for this chapter. Gerard Reinink provided me a lot of tips/tricks in digital photogrammetry and supplied all earth observation data for this research. The success of runout modelling was due to the contribution of Santiago Beguería with the model, Victor Jetten with PCRASTER, Sekhar Lukose with the Pest implementation and Theo van Asch with the parameters. I highly appreciate their contributions. Also in Chapter 7 I had a large support of the geophysical team of IGP carrying out together 10 days fieldwork for the geophysical survey in Guantánamo. During four years at ITC I met many colleagues, MSc and PhD students who made me feel more comfortable during this period away from my country and my family…thanks a lot for all your support. This is especially relevant for the people in my office: Carolina, Veronica, Graciela and Sekhar. I must thank other friends at ITC who helped a lot in many aspects: Lyande, Javier, Marco, Diana, Mike, Ard and many others. At the same time the people in my office in Cuba were very valuable during this period…my thanks to Dalia, Kenya, Bienvenido and William. Many other friends I knew in The Netherlands also lend me a hand whenever I needed and I should thank them as well. I intentionally will not list them as the space is limited but I will remember their friendship. Last but not least, a special word of thanks to my family, who kept in touch with me all the time and encouraged me to “finish” the thesis. They know I did the best I could and I will always appreciate the way they love me. The last sentence is dedicated to my children, Enriquito and Delita, for the four years I borrowed from you hoping it will be worth somehow in the future. E.A. Castellanos Abella September/2008 Table of Contents PART I: Introduction, methodology and context CHAPTER 1: Introduction 1 1.1. Landslide problems in the World and in Cuba 2 1.2. Landslide research problem 5 1.3. Research objectives and scope 6 1.4. Landslide research questions 6 1.5. Research structure and book outline 7 1.6. Overview of case study areas 8 CHAPTER 2: Basis of spatial landslide risk assessment 11 2.1 Introduction 12 2.2 Landslide risk management framework. 13 2.3 Data collection for landslide risk assessment 17 2.4 Landslide hazard assessment 22 2.5 Landslide vulnerability assessment 24 2.6 Landslide risk assessment, an overview 26 2.6.1 Qualitative landslide risk assessment 28 2.6.2 Semi quantitative risk assessment 30 2.6.3 Quantitative risk assessment 31 2.7 Landslide risk evaluation and control 33 2.8 Multi-level approach 36 2.9 Conclusions and recommendations 38 CHAPTER 3: Disaster management and geospatial data in Cuba 43 3.1 Introduction 44 3.2 Disaster risk reduction and management in Cuba 45 3.2.1 Civil Defence system in Cuba 45 3.2.2 Multi-hazard risk assessment 50 3.2.3 Disaster database in Guantánamo 52 3.3 Geospatial data as a support for risk assessment in Cuba 53 3.3.1 Earth observation data for landslide studies 54 3.3.2 Main data producers, providers and users 57 3.3.3 Spatial data infrastructure 60 3.3.4 An example of data producer: housing inventory system in Cuba 62 3.4 Conclusions 65 PART II: Case study applications CHAPTER 4: National landslide risk assessment 67 4.1 Introduction 68 4.2 National landslide risk assessment model 69 4.2.1 Design issues and objectives 69 4.2.2 Multi-criteria analysis and analytic hierarchy process 72 4.2.3 Standardization, weighting and evaluation rules 75 4.3 Indicators analysis 77 4.3.1 Landslides in Cuba 77 4.3.2 Hazard indicators 80 4.3.3 Vulnerability indicators 87 4.4 Results and discussion 91 4.5 Conclusions 98 CHAPTER 5: Provincial landslide risk assessment 101 5.1 Introduction 102 5.2 Case study area: Guantánamo province 104 5.3 Landslide hazard analysis 105 5.3.1 Landslides in Guantánamo province 105 5.3.2 Indicators for landslide hazard 108 5.3.3 Methods for susceptibility and hazard analysis 113 5.3.4 Landslide susceptibility and hazard 120 5.4 Landslide vulnerability analysis 128 5.4.1 Defining elements at risk 128 5.4.2 Landslide vulnerability assessment 135 5.5 Landslide risk analysis 140 5.5.1 Qualitative assessment of landslide risk 140 5.5.2 Semi-Quantitative assessment of landslide risk 142 5.6 Conclusions 149 CHAPTER 6: Municipal landslide risk assessment 153 6.1 Introduction 154 6.2 The study area: San Antonio del Sur 155 6.3 Data preparation and processing 157 6.4 Assessment of landslide hazard 162 6.4.1 Geology and tectonic 162 6.4.2 Geomorphology and landslides 164 6.4.3 Heuristic hazard assessment 172 6.5 Assessment of landslide risk 180 6.5.1 Risk for houses 180 6.5.2 Risk for roads 184 6.5.3 Risk for agriculture and forest 187 6.6 Discussion and conclusions 190 CHAPTER 7: Local landslide risk assessment 193 7.1 Introduction 194 7.2 Los Jagüeyes landslide 195 7.2.1 Detailed photo-interpretation and geomorphological analysis 198 7.2.2 DEM preparation pre- and post-event 200 7.2.3 Geophysical survey 202 7.2.4 Profiling and volume calculation 206 7.2.5 Conceptual landslide model and runout simulation 207 7.3 Caujerí scarp – up-scaling analysis