Research database

The IPCC report [1] recognizes the interdependence of climate, ecosystems and human societies. Landslides triggered by climate change are a clue of this interaction: they cause enormous damages, aggravated by the degradation of infrastructures and the abandonment of inland areas. Italy is one of the countries most affected by landslides [2], and about a third of these are rapid phenomena, such as rockfall (RF) and debris flow (DF) [3]. Near real-time geophysical monitoring of landslide properties is particularly needed for analyzing the complex process of precursory pre-failure mechanisms and constraint the time and spatial evolution of unstable volumes. Structural adaptation responses are fundamental for reducing the associated risk. Moreover, the current economic context and the new policies related to the environment, which have set very ambitious targets of carbon neutrality by 2050, confront us with new challenges, including the design approach for protecting and safeguarding inland from landslides. The concept of "oversizing of countermeasures", which also brings an undesired additional carbon footprint associated with extra materials and works, should be rethought in the framework of sustainability while keeping the highest safety standards intact. This research aims to propose and develop innovative approaches, integrated with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), with priority on carbon footprinting (CF), for the design of countermeasures against RF and DF in inland areas, paying particular attention to their economic and environmental sustainability.