Abstract
On the night of 13 December 1982, Ancona experienced the catastrophic reactivation of an old and large landslide located along the coast to the west of the city. The outcomes of past and new geotechnical investigations and the data from the 30 year readings of the monitoring instruments have been integrated to redefine and update the actual location of the sliding surfaces. According to the new analysis, the landslide involves four main sliding surfaces with different extents and depths. The deepest surfaces converge at depth in a shear band and their toes are positioned near or beyond the coast. Numerical and analytical modelling of the landslide has been carried out using the newly derived sliding surface geometries. The numerical modelling has allowed a qualitative assessment of the deformation pattern, confirming the geometry of the sliding surfaces derived from the geotechnical investigations. The stability analyses have been performed applying the limit equilibrium method to quantify the instability conditions of the landside. The analyses have been carried out for five stratigraphic–geotechnical scenarios. All of these scenarios show a stability condition near the limit equilibrium.
Highlights
Slopes along the central Adriatic coast (Marche, Abruzzi and Molise regions; Central Italy) are often affected by landslides
In 2002, the Marche Region assigned to the Ancona Municipality the responsibility of creating an early warning system and an emergency plan for people who are still living in the landslide area
Each identified movement has been weighted on the basis of its soundness and reliability as well as its distance from the section trace. This means that where two or more projections along a section trace almost overlap, we considered the information from the investigation closer to the section trace to be more reliable
Summary
Slopes along the central Adriatic coast (Marche, Abruzzi and Molise regions; Central Italy) are often affected by landslides These sliding phenomena are similar in their geomorphological and geological characteristics, mainly involving Plio-Pleistocene marine clay sequences (e.g. Centamore et al 1982; Cancelli et al 1984; Fiorillo 2003). The 1982 event damaged or destroyed almost 280 buildings, involving the railway and the roads that run along the coast; there were no fatalities Following this recent reactivation, several geological and geotechnical investigations were carried out to define the extent of the landslide at the surface and at depth, the failure mechanisms and the factors that triggered the event. The evolution of the Periadriatic Basin was strongly controlled by the buried structures connected to the Apenninic chain (Bigi et al 1997; Cantalamessa & Di Celma 2004)
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