SafeLand: Changing pattern of landslides risk and strategies for its management

Abstract

SafeLand is an ongoing EC FP7 funded project, for which results will be finalized in 2012. This paper summarizes the SafeLand's activities in 2009 and 2010. The main results achieved so far include: •Development and testing of several empirical methods for predicting the characteristics of threshold rainfall events for triggering of precipitation-induced landslides. •Identification of landslide hazard and risk hotspots by an objective, GIS-based analysis for Europe. The results show clearly where landslides pose the largest hazard in Europe and the objective approach allows a ranking of the countries by exposed area and population. •Different regional climate model simulations over Europe (from the EU FP6 project ENSEMBLES) at a spatial resolution of 25 × 25 km 2 have been used to perform an extreme value analysis for trends in heavy precipitation events. In winter a general trend towards more heavy precipitation events across all analyzed regional climate model simulations is found. For summer, a slight increase of heavy precipitation in Northern Europe and a general decrease in southern Europe is found in all regional climate model simulations. •The prototype of a web-based "toolbox" of innovative and technically appropriate prevention and mitigation measures was developed. The toolbox does a preliminary assessment and ranking of up to 60 structural and non-structural landslide risk mitigation options. The evaluation is based on technology, experience and expert judgment in Europe and abroad, and factors such as cost-effectiveness, maturity and applicability of technology, aesthetics, and other user-defined criteria are considered. •Development of an empirical model for assessing the changes in landslide frequency (hazard) as a function of changes in the demography and population density. •Case histories and "hotspots" of European landslides have been collected and documented. Data for 41 potential case study sites have been compiled and summarized. These comprise 39 sites in Europe located in Italy, France, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Andorra, and Romania; as well as one site in Canada and one in India. Almost every type of landslide and every type of movement is represented in these sites. SafeLand is also designated project IPL-144 in the International Program for Landslides. Further information on the SafeLand project can be found at its web site http://safeland--fp7.eu/.