Giving Compass' Take:

• Smithsonian Magazine explains that Australian researchers have used both AI and applied mathematics to develop new software capable of detecting landslides up to two weeks before they happen.

• How close is this technology to practical use? And what, in general, can we do to boost funding for more tech-based solutions to help prevent future disasters?

• Read more about the threat and death toll of landslides. 

In Northern India last week, seven members of a family were buried alive in their home by a mudslide caused by heavy rains. In July, a landslide at a jade mine in Myanmar killed 27. Early this year, debris flows in Southern California killed more than 20 people.

Landslides, mudslides, debris flows — all geologic hazards involving earth, mud or rocks moving quickly downhill—can happen almost anywhere there are slopes. As they occur suddenly and seemingly without warning, they’re often deadly. Though estimates vary, these events kill nearly 5,000 people a year.

But Australian researchers may have found a way to detect landslides as far as two weeks in advance, giving residents time to evacuate and engineers the opportunity to shore up slopes. Using AI and applied mathematics they’ve developed a software that can identify the subtle signs of an impending slide, signs that would be invisible to the naked eye.

“Right now, a lot of the predictions [about where landslides will happen] are based on someone’s gut instinct on the location,” says Antoinette Tordesillas, a professor at the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne, who co-led the research. “We don’t rely on gut instinct. We want to develop an objective method here.”

Read the full article about predicting landslides through tech by Emily Matchar at Smithsonian.