Abstract
Coseismic and rainfall-triggered landslides are a common hazard in many
terrains, and the risk associated with them can be quantified, usually
by probabilistic modelling. These events are well-documented as a
special case of a cascading hazard chain, and the assessment is commonly
done via spatial modelling of susceptibility (suppressing temporal
dependence) or tailoring models to specific areas and events. The
interaction between Earthquakes and rainfall is not usually implemented
in a model, as it is considered coincidental. However, because
landslides have multiple triggering factors, there is a need for a
statistical model that incorporates both features, in a manner such that
the separate and joint effects can be estimated. This helps with
understanding the interactions between primary events in the triggering
of a single secondary hazard type that is crucial for generally
applicable multi-hazard methodologies. The presented work aims at the
apportioning of the relative and combined effect on landslide triggering
by earthquakes and rainfall using a discrete approximation to a
multivariate hierarchical point process. Doing so provides a building
block in a general framework with the potential to be extended to other
chains of events. A case study on the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna
is included, using one of the longest and most complete landslide data
sets known. Multiple models for the rainfall-earthquake interaction in
landslide triggering are trialed, with the best explanation being
additive effects from rainfall intensity, rainfall duration and
coseismic triggering.