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Recent landslide events demonstrate the need to improve landslide forecasting and early warning capabilities. Hereby, the early warning should not be restricted to monitoring, data transmission, analysis and issuing warnings, but should also include risk communication and the decision making process. In this research, local and regional investigations were carried out to analyze landslide characteristics in the Swabian Alb, and to develop prototypic early warning systems as part of an integrative and transferable warning chain. On the local scale, an extensive slope monitoring system was installed on a seasonally reactivated landslide. The physically-based slope stability software CHASM was applied and consequently two web-based applications were developed: a technical early warning model to constantly calculate slope stability; and a decision-support system for quick calculation of stability for freely selectable slope profiles. Regional investigation included the analysis of available landslide inventories and the subsequent implementation of a rainfall threshold-based early warning application. future behavior in engineering practice, the use of these models within landslide early warning systems is only rarely reported. It has to be noted that implemented regional landslide early warning systems mainly represent prototypes even though preliminary rainfall thresholds and quantitative rainfall forecast data required for such systems are available for many regions. In addition, most of these landslide early warning systems are only temporarily installed and maintained. However, it is important to understand that effective landslide early warning …