Abstract
Rockfalls evolve rapidly and unpredictably in mountain environments and can cause considerable losses to human societies, structures, economical activities, and also natural and historical heritage. Rockfall risk analyses are complex and multi-scale processes involving several disciplines and techniques. This complexity is due to the main features of rockfall phenomena, which are extremely variable over space and time. Today, a considerable number of methods exists for protecting land, as well as assessing and managing the risk level. These methodologies are often very different from each other, depending on the data required, the purposes of the analysis, and the reference scale adopted, i.e., the analysis level of detail. Nevertheless, several questions still remain open with reference to each phase of the hazard and risk process. This paper is devoted to a general overview of existing risk estimation methodologies and a critical analysis of some open questions with the aim of highlighting possible further research topics. A typical risk assessment framework is exemplified by analyzing a real case study. Each step of the process is treated at both the detailed and the large scale in order to highlight the main characteristics of each level of detail.
Highlights
Protecting people, structures and infrastructures against rockfall phenomena is one of the most challenging task in the study of rock slope stability, especially in time of rapid and extreme climate changes [1,2,3]
It is worthy to note that the stability conditions of a rock slope vary continuously due to climate changes [39,40] that increase the rockfall frequency on mountain slopes, especially during extremely warm summers as in 2003 and 2015 [3], and the presence of new fallen blocks laying along the slopes
From a quantitative point of view, the rockfall hazard can be defined as the likelihood that a particular danger exists or may occur within a given area [17,70]
Summary
Protecting people, structures and infrastructures against rockfall phenomena is one of the most challenging task in the study of rock slope stability, especially in time of rapid and extreme climate changes [1,2,3]. When the anthropized territories are prone to slope instability events, the possibility of economical, physical, and social losses has to be analyzed and, if necessary, reduced. For this purpose, a crucial role is played by risk assessment procedures [9] that allow us to estimate the landslide risk within a given area subject to specific types of landslide in a qualitative or quantitative way. This paper is devoted to discuss some of the most important questions and critical aspects that can arise when performing a rockfall risk assessment (i.e., danger, hazard, vulnerability, risk mitigation and management), especially with reference to the different scales of analysis [10,11,12,13]. The main issues surveyed during the analysis of the case under study are illustrated in detail
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