Details surrounding more than 150 landslides in Alberta this century are being plugged into a database to help warn about the dangers of building on potentially unstable land.

David Cruden, a University of Alberta professor of civil and environmental engineering, is compiling information in a database on the location of, and weather conditions during, 156 Alberta landslides.

The largest slides have occurred in the Peace River lowlands, where glacial meltwaters eroded the Peace River valley to depths of 200 metres below the surrounding plains. The erosion triggers landslides along the valley walls.

When the database is ready in 2000, engineers and regional planners will be able to plug in the latitude and longitude of a piece of land to check if there has been a landslide in the area before. Existing structures in high-risk areas could be relocated or reinforced.

Hundreds of landslides across Canada cause an estimated $100 million in damage annually, usually from collapsed or blocked roadways, train wrecks and ruptured pipelines. Landslides are more common in spring and summer in mountainous or earthquake-prone regions and are more likely during heavy rains.

Cruden's efforts join those of other researchers country-wide who are hoping to create a national landslide inventory through the Geological Survey of Canada.

GSC landslide specialist Steve Evans has assembled a database of the 48 Canadian landslides that involved fatalities. He says creating a database of all fatal and non-fatal Canadian landslides will take more than a decade.