Slovenian National Landslide DataBase – A promising approach to slope mass movement prevention plan

The Slovenian territory is, geologically speaking, very diverse and mainly composed of sediments or sedimentary rocks. Slope mass movements occur almost in all parts of the country. In the Alpine carbonate areas of the northern part of Slovenia rock falls, rock slides and even debris flows can be triggered.In the mountainous regions of central Slovenia composed from different clastic rocks, large soil landslides are quite usual, and in the young soil sediments of eastern part of Slovenia there is a large density of small soil landslides.The damage caused by slope mass movements is high, but still no common strategy and regulations to tackle this unwanted event, especially from the aspect of prevention, have been developed. One of the first steps towards an effective strategy of struggling against landslides and other slope mass movements is a central landslide database, where (ideally) all known landslide occurrences would be reported, and described in as much detail as possible. At the end of the project of National Landslide Database construction which ended in May 2005 there were more than 6600 registered landslides, of which almost half occurred at a known location and were accompanied with the main characteristic descriptions.The erected database is a chance for Slovenia to once and for all start a solid slope mass movement prevention plan. The only part which is missing and which is the most important one is adopting a legal act that will legalise the obligation of reporting slope mass movement events to the database.