NEWS received from Manfred Stähli (WSL, Switzerland) and Ben Mirus (USGS, USA)
On February 3, 2023, a meeting of LandAware WG 5 “Innovations” addressed the role of wind speed and direction for landslide occurrence in Hurricane prone regions.
Guest speaker, Yuri Gorokhovich (Lehman College, City University of New York) illustrated how we are getting closer to predicting landslides in Hurricane prone regions in real-time using wind information.
NEWS received from Davide Tiranti (Department of Natural and Environmental Risks, Regional Agency for Environmental Protection of Piemonte – ARPA Piemonte, Italy)
A new Special Issue entitled “Geomorphological Mapping Research for Landslide” in the GeoHazards journal (MDPI) is currently open for contributions. The Special Issue is guest edited by Davide Tiranti.
Without a thorough knowledge of the landslides’ distribution on the territory you cannot lay the basis for developing a LEWS. The mapping of landslides is the first fundamental step through which it is possible to establish the relationships between landslides and the territorial and climatic variables responsible for their triggering and evolution. The purpose of this Special Issue is to collect scientific works aimed at mapping landslides and the applications that derive from them, such as the production of inventory maps, susceptibility maps, hazard/risk maps, urban planning, and the development of tools in a GIS environment aimed at collecting, processing, analysis, visualization and dissemination of landslide data.
If you are interested in submitting your manuscripts to the SI, but your institution does not fund the open access publication, please contact Davide Tiranti toget a 100% APC discount (a maximum of 10 discounts are available).
NEWS received from Hiroaki Nakaya (NILIM-MLIT, Japan) and Graziella Devoli (NVE, Norway)
LandAware Working Group 1 releases its first/initial version of glossary and catalog as a result of its activities for the first two years.
These are tentative in their nature, but more than merely passing, collaborative efforts of related associates and observers of the WG during the Pandemic of COVID 19.
The outline was briefly discussed in the Workshop held in October 2022 in Zurich, and additional explanation is to be made in the Interpraevent in Taiwan, postponed until next April, 2023.
It is hoped that members of the LandAware, together with other professional communities, refer to the common terminology enlisted in the glossary and to the Catalog, which definitely needs periodic update, to facilitate communication both internally within the community and externally with-out for extensional purpose.
The first General Assembly (GA) of the LandAware network was held online on Friday, December 2, 2022.
After a brief recounting of the genesis of LandAware and its first two years of activities, the GA discussed the reorganization proposal made by the Executive Committee (EC), particularly regarding the working groups (WGs).
The proposal unanimously voted by the GA participating members is the following:
WG1, WG2 and WG6, to be closed within a few months, after having finalized ongoing activities;
WG3, WG4, WG5, WG7 and WG8, to continue the activities with current Chairs and co-Chairs;
The Communication-Networking activity (former WG2) will be carried out directly by the EC, more specifically by a Secretary in the EC;
The new EC for the period 2022-2024 comprises: all past members but Fausto Guzzetti and Dalia Kirschbaum; new member Ben Mirus;
Michele Calvello was re-elected as LandAware’s president for the period 2022-2024, Stefano Luigi Gariano was nominated LandAware’s secretary for the period 2022-2024;
New task forces may be created in the coming months in some WGs. The leaders of active task forces will be invited to participate in the EC meetings. In particular, a specific task force dedicated to training activities in south Asia was proposed by Thom Bogaard and approved.
The current members of LandAware will soon be asked to confirm their willingness in continuing being members of the network, filling a new registration form.
NEWS received from Manfred Stähli (WSL, Switzerland)
We would like to draw your attention to the session 2.12. “LANDSLIDE EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS: INNOVATIONS AND APPLICATIONS” which is scheduled in the program of the 6th World Landslide Forum (Florence, Italy, 14-17 November 2023).
The session is open to contributions from researchers, agencies, decision-makers and practitioners and intends to cover every topic connected with LEWS, at every scale: methodological innovations, technical advances, operational implementations, reliability evaluation, documentation of case studies, communication strategies, social perception of warnings and management of uncertainties.
You can read the complete description of the session here, and submit your abstract at https://wlf6.org/submission/. Please take note that the abstract submission deadline is set to 28 February 2023.
We wait for your contribution and we hope to see many LandAware colleagues in Florence next year!
16:00-16:15 Dylan Mikesell (NGI, Norway) – Timeline and planned activities
16:15-16:30 Ben Mirus (USGS, USA) – Overview of USGS monitoring, modeling, and other research strategies for real-time situational awareness and landside warning
16:30-16:45 Luca Piciullo (NGI, Norway) – A first step towards a IoT-based local early warning system for an unsaturated slope in Norway
16:45-17:00 Roberto Greco (University of Campania, Italy) – Identification of Hydrological Controls for Improvement of Shallow Landslide Prediction in Pyroclastic Slopes of Campania
17:00 Discussion
Ben Mirus is a Research Geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landslide Hazards Program in Golden, Colorado. Ben applies his background in geology, hillslope hydrology, and numerical modeling towards developing new tools for landslide hazard assessment and loss reduction.
Luca Piciullo PhD at the University of Salerno, Italy, in Geotechnical engineering. Currently employed at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), Oslo, Natural Hazards division, in the section Slope stability and risk assessment. The technical and scientific work focuses on slope stability analysis, monitoring and risk mitigation with early warning systems, risk assessment of building damages due to deep excavations and tailings dams stability analysis.
Roberto Greco, Ph.D. in Hydraulic Engineering at Università di Napoli “Federico II” in 1997, professor of Hydrology and Hydraulic Infrastructures at Università della Campania “L. Vanvitelli”, teaching in the M.Sc. courses in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Since 2016, member of the Editorial Board of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. The research activity deals with monitoring and modelling of water in natural and artificial systems, with specific focus on hillslope hydrology and landslides; preferential flows in unsaturated soils; environmental impact of sewer systems; management of water supply networks.
Workshop #2 was about real-time monitoring strategies for risk management. Three different case studies were presented by Emanuele Intrieri (University of Florence), Armin Dachauer (WSL), Claudia Meisina (University of Pavia).
If you are interested to have access to the past workshops material (presentations, recordings, flyers) please send an email to luca.piciullo@ngi.no
New paper published on Natural Hazards journal on real-time monitoring and modelling: “A first step towards a IoT-based local early warning system for an unsaturated slope in Norway” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11069-022-05524-3
The paper describes a framework for a IoT-based local landslide early warning system (Lo-LEWS). Monitoring, modelling, forecasting and warning represent the main phases of the proposed framework. In this study, the first two phases have been applied to capture the hydrological behaviour of a natural unsaturated slope located adjacent to a railway track in Eastern Norway.
The session focuses on LEWSs at all scale (from local to regional) and stages of maturity (i.e., from prototype to active and dismissed ones). Test cases describing operational application of consolidated approaches are welcome, as well as works dealing with promising recent innovations, even if still at an experimental stage. The session is not focused only on technical scientific aspects, and submissions concerning practical and social aspects are also welcome.
Contributions addressing the following topics will be considered positively: – conventional and innovative slope-scale monitoring systems for early warning purposes – conventional and innovative regional prediction tools for warning purposes – innovative on-site instruments and/or remote sensing devices implemented in LEWS – warning models for warning/alert issuing – operational applications and performance analyses of LEWS – communication strategies – emergency phase management
