Rainfall-triggered debris flows threaten communities, infrastructure, and transportation corridors in steep terrain. Traditional intensity-duration thresholds can produce many false alarms and often don’t clearly define the area where a warning applies.
Our team recently co-authored an article in Landslides that introduces area-based probability-intensity (APBI) curves that combine landslide inventories with gridded rainfall data. Tested across multiple watersheds in British Columbia, the method improved key prediction metrics and offers a clearer, more practical way to communicate debris flow likelihood over specific areas.
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