Measuring and Modelling Catastrophic Landslides and Debris Flows

Durata del progetto

2020 - 2024

Cooperazione Finanziamento

Landslides kill thousands of people worldwide, and cause billions of dollars in damage every year. A subset of these landslides, known as flow-like landslides, can travel long distances at very high speeds. Our understanding of these complex and destructive natural hazards is limited by a lack of understanding of the governing mechanisms that control flow-like motion. This SNSF funded Ambizione project will investigate three key mechanisms- longitudinal sorting, liquefaction and entrainment - using innovative field investigation, laboratory modelling and numerical modelling. The proposed research will make significant fundamental advances in the identification and quantification of physical processes controlling landslides, as well as applied contributions to engineering practice through the development of predictive tools. New technologies for understanding flow-like landslide at both the laboratory and filed scale will be developed and tested, such as high temporal resolution LiDAR scans, an example of which is given below.