USAID-USGS LANDSLIDE DISASTER ASSISTANCE TEAM: HELPING TO BUILD LANDSLIDE TECHNICAL CAPACITY THROUGH INTERNATIONAL PARTNERSHIPS

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Landslide Disaster Assistance Team (LDAT) strives to support international collaborators with reducing landslide risk through training, hazards education, and emergency response. LDAT assists foreign partners, upon their request, with technical capacity building on issues they have identified as priorities for landslide risk reduction. The LDAT goal is to support and empower foreign partners in identifying and mitigating their landslides hazards, while building on their existing knowledge and capacity. In addition, LDAT allows U.S.-based scientists to engage in projects that broaden their scientific and cultural perspective and develop important relationships with international colleagues. LDAT draws scientists from across the USGS that have diverse specialties and areas of expertise including landslide inventory and susceptibility mapping, remote sensing, emergency response, runout modelling, landslide and rockfall hazard assessments, rainfall-triggered shallow landslides and debris flows, earthquake-induced landslides, landslide instrumentation, post-wildfire debris flow modelling, and landslide hazard education and outreach. LDAT is a joint program of the USGS and U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (USAID/BHA) and works closely with the Earthquake Disaster Assistance Team (EDAT). EDAT is another joint effort by USAID-USGS that collaborates with foreign partners to study, respond to, and reduce earthquake hazards. Both LDAT and EDAT operate similarly to the USAID-USGS Volcano Disaster Assistance Program (VDAP). LDAT is currently engaging in a range of technical assistance activities in Sri Lanka, Chile, El Salvador, the Federated States of Micronesia and proposing activities in Fiji, Guatemala, and Uzbekistan.