Interactive: Kerala has suffered most landslides in India, shows govt data

In Kerala’s Wayanad, 200 people have died in major landslides triggered by heavy rain on Tuesday (July 30) and hundreds are still trapped under the debris, raising fears of more fatalities.

During the last decade, Kerala has suffered the most due to landslides in India, according to data released by the Union government.

As per the inputs from the Ministry of Mines, the Geological Survey of India (GSI) has collected data on 3,782 major landslides that occurred between 2015 and 2022 in different States and Union territories, which have impacted lives and infrastructure, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr. Jitendra Singh had said in the Lok Sabha on July 27, 2022.

Click on the map of the state to know the number of landslides.

These landslide data were collected by GSI through onsite field investigations under the Post-Disaster Studies programme taken up annually by GSI in all the landslide-prone states and Union territories as per GSI’s Standard Operating Procedure, mainly in response to the requests received from the concerned state governments.

According to the Union government, out of the 3,782 major landslide incidences, Kerala witnessed the highest with 2,239 landslides during the period 2015-2022.

Field validation

For all these landslides, during field validation, GSI collected vital preliminary geoparametric attributes for each of the landslides, including studying its impacts, future vulnerability, and indicating the requirements for future detailed geoscientific investigations, if any. The Centre said all the data are also used for updating GSI’s existing national landslide inventory.

Jitendra Singh said that avalanches and landslides are natural phenomena that cannot be prevented. However, early warnings and forecasts for rainfall and snowfall are being issued by various institutions under the Ministry of Earth Sciences and the Ministry of Defence.