ABSTRACT
In March 2014, a catastrophic landslide in Washington State destroyed a community and killed 43 people. An analysis of the available information using a new approach to manage risk when dealing with rare, high consequence hazards indicates that if the risk for another landslide is accepted, then the expected time between occurrences of massive landslides at this location is about 2000–3000 years, the mean occurrence rate tends to increase with time since the last occurrence, and the alternative of avoiding the risk is preferred if the present worth cost to avoid it (i.e. prevent development) for 100 years is less than about 1/6 the cost of another massive landslide.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 For combinations of and that produce the same information potential, each combination is assumed to be equally probable as an approximation to the third principle of the Theory of Decision Entropy.