Physically based approach for rainfall-induced landslide projections in a changing climate

Abstract

In a changing climate, assessing the effects that the variation of the expected rainfalls can cause to slope stability is of primary importance. Precipitations are expected to increase, and, in particular, there will be more events characterised by extreme rainfalls, which legitimates the possibility of an increase in landslide activity. A probabilistic physically based model, which takes into account the uncertainty in soil characterisation, has been applied to a study area in central Italy, forced with different scenarios of expected rainfalls. The results of the prediction are compared in terms of variation of percentage of unstable territory. It is observed that the projection of the expected rainfall produces a general increase of the number of potentially unstable zones. Although many uncertainties in the analyses of the climatic trends and in their related effects at the ground still exist, the presented approach shows that physically based methods can be used to support quantitative projections of the expected impacts.