Research Overview

Understanding landslide risks is important for people living in hilly areas in India. A promising way of communicating landslide risks is via simulation tools, where these tools integrate both human factors (e.g., public investments to mitigate landslides) and environmental factors (e.g., spatial geology and rainfall).

In this paper, we develop an interactive simulation model on landslide risks and use it to design a web-based Interactive Landslide Simulator (ILS) microworld. The ILS microworld is based on the assumption that landslides occur due to both environmental factors (spatial geology and rainfall) as well as human factors (lack of monetary investments to mitigate landslides).

We run a lab-based experiment involving human participants performing in ILS and we show that the ILS performance helps improve public understanding of landslide risks. Overall, we propose ILS to be an effective tool for doing what-if analyses by policymakers and for educating public about landslide risks.

Publications

Interactive Landslide Simulator: A Tool for Landslide Risk Assessment and Communication. Jul 2016. Advances in Applied Digital Human Modeling and Simulation (Springer Books). Book Chapter. full-text
Learning in an Interactive Simulation Tool against Landslide Risks: The Role of Amount & Availability of Experi- ential Feedback. Sep 2017. Natural Hazards & Earth System Sciences. Journal Paper

Collaborators

Pratik Chaturvedi, Ph.D. student at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi and Research Scientist at DRDO, New Delhi

Technologies Used

- PHP, Bootstrap, MySQL, Palisade Decision Tools (@RISK, Evolver), VBScripting, Monte Carlo Simulations

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by Thapar University, Patiala and Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, India. The authors thank Akanksha Jain and Sushmita Negi, Centre for Converging Technologies, University of Rajasthan for their contribution in collection of human data.