Abstract
Abstract. Rockfall hazard zoning is essential for ensuring the safety of communities settled at the toe of potentially unstable slopes. Rockfall hazard zoning can be performed to include the effect of protection measures when land use restrictions might not be enough to mitigate hazards. The real effectiveness of the measures must be assessed to make sure they can play their role, especially in those cases when measures might have been installed at a given site for years. This article focuses on how to evaluate the effectiveness of rockfall protection measures and how hazard zoning can be influenced by their correct operation. The approach presented is divided into four main stages, which include a two-step procedure to evaluate the effectiveness of both existing and new protections. It is based on quite a comprehensive rockfall protection database built for the canton of Vaud in Switzerland, and on the Swiss Federal Guidelines for hazard zoning; however, all the methodological framework proposed and related considerations could be in principle extended to any other regional or national context in which a combination of intensity and frequency is used to assess rockfall hazards.
Highlights
Mountainous regions all over the world are affected by rockfall hazards, which may constitute a serious threat to the safety of local communities settled at the toe of rocky slopes
Reclassification of hazard and requalification of the areas concerned in terms of land use
This work presents an approach for evaluating the effectiveness of protection measures and their influence on rockfall hazard zoning
Summary
Mountainous regions all over the world are affected by rockfall hazards, which may constitute a serious threat to the safety of local communities settled at the toe of rocky slopes. National authorities have been trying to establish appropriate hazard and risk management policies to cope with landslides, including rockfalls (Cascini et al, 2005; Labiouse and Abbruzzese, 2011). Some countries were able to define a comprehensive set of guidelines for landslide hazard management at the national (or at least regional) level (AGS, 2002; Fell et al, 2008; Raetzo et al, 2002; M.A.T.E./M.E.T.L., 1999; Copons et al, 2001). Hazard zoning maps are elaborated to delineate areas of conflict between human assets and the rockfall runout, and each level of hazard in the maps corresponds to constraints to the construction, set for each of the hazard levels defined in the guidelines, both for new and already existing urban areas
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