Guest Editors: Timothy Tiggeloven, Kelley De Polt, Christopher White, Marc van den Homberg, Erick Mas, Samira Pfeiffer, Lara Smale, Luca Piciullo
This special issue aims to advance the field of early warning systems (EWSs) and focuses on practical implementation, multi-hazard and impact-based integration, innovation, and evidence from operational EWSs. We are particularly interested in contributions that move beyond conceptual frameworks and that demonstrate how EWSs can effectively forecast (multiple) hazards and their interrelationships while taking the vulnerabilities and coping capacities of diverse populations in real-world settings into account and by enabling early action.
Shallow landslides are responsible for more than 50% of causalities due to landslides in northwestern Italy in the last century. The aim of the research study presented here is focused on understanding if and how climate change influences the occurrence and behavior of this landslide type. A total of 120 widespread shallow landslide events have been analyzed from 1960 to 2019, taking into account the spatial and time distribution in association with related rainfall historical data elaborated by the Optimal Interpolation (OI) model. Results underline that shallow landslide events’ number (aggregated per five-year intervals) is characterized by a weak trend consisting of a slight increase in the Alps and a more pronounced decrease in the hilly and Apennines environments. In addition, the trend of the annual accumulated rainfall average shows a weak drop in the winter season of about 9 mm in ten years. Moreover, the rainy days have generally decreased over the hills and Apennines, while in the Alps, only in the summer season, with a decreasing rate of about 1.5 days every ten years. The rainfall trends are in accordance with those of shallow landslide events, pointing out the close and direct dependence of the shallow landslide events on the rainfall regime variations. The results obtained were also used to validate the robustness of the performance of the Regional Shallow Landslide Early Warning System adopted in Piemonte over the investigated period, confirming the effectiveness of the trigger thresholds used for the entire historical series and for different geographical areas.
Reference: Tiranti D., Ronchi C. (2023) Climate Change Impacts on Shallow Landslide Events and on the Performance of the Regional Shallow Landslide Early Warning System of Piemonte (Northwestern Italy). GeoHazards 2023, 4(4), 475-496; https://doi.org/10.3390/geohazards4040027
A new Special Issue entitled “Landslide Research: State of the Art and Innovations” in the GeoHazards journal is currently open for contributions. The Special Issue is guest-edited by Davide Tiranti. https://www.mdpi.com/journal/geohazards/special_issues/U728W8F9ZX The purpose of this Special Issue is to collect and group together quality scientific papers on these research fields and derived practical/operational applications. The topics related to the Special Issue therefore concern the innovative methodologies to achieve landslides identification, classification, characterization and hazard/risk evaluation through geomorphological field surveys and studies, remote sensing applications, GIS data mapping, processing and representation, the analysis of predisposing and triggering factors, landslide early warning systems implementation and the impact of current and future climate change scenarios on the evolution of these phenomena.
