Assessing damage data availability in national landslide databases for SFDRR reporting: a case study of Kuala Lumpur as a local-level application

The measurement of global progress in implementing a Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) targets should be able to report on a set of 38 indicators including those related to disaster damage. The ability of a hazard-specific database (e.g. landslide database in this case) in providing information that meets the SFDRR target is not well researched. This study aims to examine the coverage of information in the existing landslide databases that is relevant to the SFDRR indicators, to check the availability of damage data and to evaluate the current data collection practices according to SFDRR compatibility to local scale application in assessing the applicability of existing damage data to estimate the landslide costs. Content analysis was conducted to assess the availability of damage data and compile landslide events data from different sources to develop a local-level landslide database. Replacement cost and market price approaches were used to estimate landslide costs. Kuala Lumpur is chosen as a study area to represent the lowest spatial resolution at the municipal level. The results show that existing national landslide databases have significant shortages with regard to the availability of damage data necessary for SFDRR reporting. The landslide data in Kuala Lumpur show a high level of missing fundamental hazard information, such as the type (73%), cause (93%) and size (92%). Of the compiled events, 35.9% had no associated damage data, 64.1% had at least one accompanying recorded damage indicator and 58.6% had at least one accompanying reported monetizable damage indicator. This paper contributes to literature by identifying gaps in current landslide data management practices in Malaysia.