REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, BANJARNEGARA -- The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) plans to install 20 units of landslide early warning system (EWS) device in several regions on Java Island.

"The President has instructed a device that could detect a landslide be developed to deal with possible landslide and flood in the current rainy season that will last until March on Java Island, and until June in Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Ambon," The agency's chief Syamsul Ma'arif said on Sunday, February 15.

In response to the instruction, the BNPB has planned to install 20 units of EWS device in some locations on Indonesia's most populous island.

In December 2014, a major landslide buried a village in Banjarnegara, Central Java, Indonesia, killing more than 70 people. The BNPB reported recently that landslides accounted for the highest disaster death toll throughout the archipelago in 2014. The number of landslides in Indonesia increased to 376 in 2014 from 291 in 2012. Last year's landslides claimed 248 lives.

The 2012 study found that nearly half of Indonesia's 250 million citizens live in landslide-risk zones, with 40 million located in what they called high-risk zones mostly on Java, Sumatra, and Sulawesi islands.

BNPB spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho believed that land-use change was one of the primary causes of the December 2014 disaster.

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