Introduction

At the start of this millennium, a program called the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (http://www.unisdr.org) was launched. The parallel efforts of the United Nations and some other global organizations together with the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL; http://www.iclhq.org) led to the International Programme on Landslides (IPL; http://www.iplhq.org).

The IPL-ICL discussed the establishment of thematic and regional (consortia)/networks on landslides at the Secretarial meeting in Kyoto in January 2011, at the IPL-ICL Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2011 in Geneva in May 2011, and at the Secretarial meeting in Rome in October 2011 during the Second World Landslide Forum. After these discussions, finally during the Tenth session of the Board of Representatives of ICL in October 2011 in FAO, several thematic networks have been proposed, and they have also been structured; one of them was the ICL Landslide Monitoring and Warning Thematic Network (LaMaWa TheN).

The membership of this thematic network consists of ten ICL member organizations from eight countries, five of them are active ICL World Centres of Excellence in Landslide Risk Reduction in the period 2011–2014 and two ICL supporters (Table 1). The coordinating role was taken by the Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering of the University of Ljubljana (Prof. Matjaž Mikoš), and the deputy coordination role will be executed by the Croatian Landslide Group (Prof. Željko Arbanas from the University of Rijeka) and by the Forestry and Forest Product Research Institute from Tsukuba, Japan (Prof. Hirotaka Ochiai).

Table 1 The LaMaWa TheN members
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Three members of this thematic network (i.e., UL FGG, GeoZS and the Croatian Landslide Group) are also members of the newly established regional ICL Adriatic-Balkan (ABC Network), where other aspects of a regional cooperation in this region will be discussed and developed.

Background justification and general objective

Numerous advanced and less advanced techniques for landslide monitoring are being applied more or less successfully in different regions of the world. The same is true for (early) warning systems that have been installed on active landslides. In most of the cases, the successful warning systems are dependent on the adequate modeling of the landslide process. There are numerous reports and research papers or case study reports available on the web, often written by the authors from only one country. The main aim for the newly established ICL thematic network is to try critically comparing different techniques and systems applied from the international point of view (possible transfer of technologies, pros, and cons). By attracting different ICL members that are very active in this field of expertise in different regions of the world, we may expect added value by preparing joint reports on the applicability, pros, and cons of different techniques and systems from one’s own experiences critically discussed by other experts in the ICL community having experiences in the same field. Furthermore, new methods and technologies that are to be developed are important strategic goals of the ICL in the 2012–2021 decade and should be based on the existing best monitoring practices and best available technologies being known to the wide world community active in the field of landslide risk mitigation.

Description of the past thematic network member activities related to landslide monitoring and warning

All the active thematic network members (the core thematic network members are given in Table 1) have different and extensive experiences with landslide monitoring and warning systems as a part of mitigation of landslides and landslide risk reduction (Table 2). There are different laboratories and field installations available to be used for the planned network activities. All members together can support the network activities by a several dozens of senior scientists and young researchers. The financial means needed for the network to run are not only mainly covered by their own means but also partially covered by the running IPL projects or being constituent part of the WCoE activities for some of the network members. It follows a short overview of their past activities that gave them credit to be connected in this skilled network.

Table 2 The LaMaWa TheN members’ past activities related to landslide monitoring and warning
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Furthermore, other ICL members are warmly invited to join the thematic network and discussions how to bring in their expertise in the field of landslide monitoring and warning. The further development of the LaMaWa Then according to the planned network activities will be discussed during the 11th Session of the Board of Representatives of ICL and the Seventh Session of the International Programme on Landslides Global Promotion Committee to be held in Paris in November 2012.

Planned network activities and expected results

The objectives of the thematic network are to be achieved by:

  1. 1.

    Setting up of a dedicated web page (within IPL web pages) showing advanced landslide monitoring techniques and providing a short but comprehensive overview (with active links to web pages) of selected installed monitoring systems for active landslides in the world;

  2. 2.

    Preparing a series of review papers for the Landslides journal covering the themes of the network and being prepared jointly by the members of the network (strong international cooperation).

Thus, the activities of the network for the period 2012–2014 can be divided into three phase:

First phase:

  1. 1.

    Organization of the network, email/web discussions, preparing a final program, and finally building of a few working groups for selected topics in the fields of landslide monitoring and warning, such as remote sensing techniques, terrestrial landslide displacements monitoring, advanced warning systems for debris flows and rockfalls, easily managed but robust (early) warning systems, etc.

  2. 2.

    Cooperation with other active ICL thematic and/or regional networks where and when needed

Second phase:

  1. 1.

    Working out of a draft report for each topic, efforts to get more international experts in the specific field to work on the draft, preparation of the final report, and publication of the final report as a review paper (tactically as an original paper in the Landslides journal)

  2. 2.

    An initiation of an IPL Project in the field of monitoring and (early) warning systems (core members will be included into the project draft preparation)

  3. 3.

    Publishing short annual reports as the ICL/IPL activities in the Landslides journal

Third phase:

  1. 1.

    Publishing (final) joint results on the IPL-ICL web page and disseminating an overview of the best monitoring practices (BMP), best (early) warning practices (BWP), and best available technologies

  2. 2.

    Organizing of TN workshops and conferences as thematic ICL conferences or sessions during World Landslide Forums (e.g., WLF III in Beijing, 2–6 June 2014)

  3. 3.

    Taking a decision how to proceed in the future with the network (prolongation, reorientation, and new focuses)

Conclusions

The ICL activities in its second decade of existence were defined by the ICL Strategic Plan 2012–2021, adopted in Kyoto in January 2012. An important part of the implementation of this strategic plan was to establish new thematic and regional networks, eight of them were launched in 2012; the ICL LaMaWa TheN being one of them.