To understand the complex interactions between landslide risk, public and private risk awareness, including land use practices and repair and mitigation measures in a complete manner, case histories were developed and analyzed using the example of the highway network of the Lower Saxon Uplands, NW Germany. The case histories utilize datasets extracted from the German landslide database that includes information of historical and current landslide impacts, elements at risk as well as land use practices and provide an overview of spatio-temporal changes in the exposure and vulnerability to landslide hazards over the past 250 years. For the developed case histories the recorded landslide events were categorized and classified at representative sites, according to landslide types, processes, and damages as well as applied repair and mitigation measures. In a further step, data of recent landslides are compared with historical and modern mitigation measures and are correlated with concepts of risk management. As a result, it is possible to identify some complex interactions between landslide hazard, hazard awareness and damage impact. The case histories show that especially since the last 20 years public risk awareness rose due to an apparent increase in landslide frequency and magnitude at some sites. Before the 1990s landslide mitigation measures were mainly low cost prevention measures such as the removal of loose rock and vegetation, rock blasting, catch barriers, and temporal or perpetual traffic lane closure. Recently there is a shift towards the implementation of expensive mitigation measures in order to minimize landslide occurrence. Local decision makers increasingly invest in expensive long-term stabilization projects like soil anchoring, rock nailing, and steel-reinforced concrete walls.
