Abstract
On 24 October 2015, following a period of heavy rainfall, a landslide occurred in the Calatabiano Municipality (Sicily Island, Southern Italy), causing the rupture of a water pipeline supplying water to the city of Messina. Following this event, approximately 250,000 inhabitants of the city suffered critical water shortages for several days. Consequently, on 6 November 2015, a state of emergency was declared (O.C.D.P. 295/2015) by the National Italian Department of Civil Protection (DPC). During the emergency management phase, a provisional by-pass, consisting of three 350-m long pipes passing through the landslide area, was constructed to restore water to the city. Furthermore, on 11 November 2015, a landslide remote-sensing monitoring system was installed with the following purposes: (i) analyse the landslide geomorphological and kinematic features in order to assess the residual landslide risk and (ii) support the early warning procedures needed to ensure the safety of the personnel involved in the by-pass construction and the landslide stabilization works. The monitoring system was based on the combined use of Ground-Based Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (GB-InSAR) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). In this work, the preliminary results of the monitoring activities and a remote 3D map of the landslide area are presented.
Highlights
Landslides represent one of the most frequent geo-hazards
The logistics of the GB-InSAR system installation provided a good spatial coverage of the landslide-affected area, including its main features and the pipeline by-pass and bulldozer trails related to the earthworks (Fig. 5)
The first six points (P1–P6) are located within the landslide body, and their cumulative displacements range from 4.5 mm (P5) up to 83 mm (P1)
Summary
Landslides represent one of the most frequent geo-hazards. They represent serious threats to human life and can cause serious socioeconomic losses on the order of billions of Euros, in terms of damage to property, infrastructure and environmental degradation (Kjekstad and Highland 2009; Petley 2012). Recent events show a significant increase in the number of disasters with natural and/or technological causes, and these disasters can have potentially serious consequences for critical infrastructure (CI) (Murray and Grubesic 2007). In Italy in particular, approximately 70 % of the country can be considered exposed to landslide risk (http://www.protezionecivile.gov.it/) and the related estimated socioeconomic losses range from 1 to 2 billion dollars annually (Canuti et al 2004).
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