Following two major landslide incidences in Ireland in 2003 in Galway and Mayo the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) established the Irish Landslides Working Group (ILWG) in 2004. In 2006 the report Landslides in Ireland was published by the group which outlined a number of topics related to landslides and their context in Ireland including the geotechnics of landslides, landslide mapping, landslides and planning, research and recommendations for future work. In the last ten years the GSI has carried out extensive work in relation to building a national landslides database and also carrying out susceptibility mapping.

Koen Verbruggen,
Chair of Irish Landslide Working Group,
Tel 01-6782864

The National Landslides Database
As part of the initial work of the Irish Landslides working Group a comprehensive database of landslide events in Ireland was compiled. Landslide events, the earliest of which dates back to 1488, were added from a variety of sources. This dataset was fundamental to future work carried out on landslide mapping in particular to Landslide Susceptibility Mapping and for the study of landslide hazard in Ireland. The National Landslides Database has recently been restructured and incorporated into a Geodatabase as part of the development of the GSI’s dedicated Landslide Viewer and as part of a recommendation from the Irish Landslide susceptibility Mapping Project. The database now holds some 900 events.

National Landslide Susceptibility Mapping
The Landslides in Ireland publication featured two case studies of landslide susceptibility mapping for the Mayo and Breifne areas. In 2013 the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI) completed a landslide susceptibility mapping project as part of the National Geoscience Programme 2007 - 2013. This project was one of the main recommendations made in the 2006 publication “Landslides in Ireland”. Engineering consultants Mouchel Ireland Ltd. were commissioned to carry out the susceptibility mapping on behalf of GSI. Further detailed information on this project can be found here

The susceptibility model produced as a result of this project is currently being assessed for counties Mayo and Kerry. Trinity College Dublin (Earth & Planetary Surface Processes) have been contracted to carry out further inventory development for these counties which will be integrated into the model. It is envisaged that this will indicate the stability of the susceptibility model on which to develop National susceptibility coverage by 2014. Further information on this can be found here.