A database of fatal coastal cliff failures

Coastal cliffs shape the world's coastlines, providing areas of beauty, habitat, scientific discovery, and recreation. However, as erosional features, coastal cliffs can pose fatal hazards. This paper presents a database of global fatal coastal cliff and slope failures from public databases and media articles. In total, the fatal coastal cliff failure database includes 292 fatalities resulting from 114 events from 1927–2024. Cliff failure events occurred in 32 countries, with the most events in Spain (20), the United States (19), France (14), and the United Kingdom (10), including 10+ event hot spots on both Réunion Island, France, and in San Diego County, California, USA. Most fatalities occurred in temperate regions, with about half of events occurring with 30 d antecedent precipitation below average, differing from databases that include non-coastal fatal landslide events driven largely by rainfall. The database is likely incomplete, and we caution tested relationships on incomplete data; however, the present results suggest that the timing of coastal fatal cliff failures may be influenced by (a) elevated rainfall causing reduced cliff stability, leading to failures in wet seasons and (b) time periods of increased tourism and recreational beach activity, exposing more people to coastal cliff failure hazards in relatively dry seasons. The results can help inform beach hazard management.