The report deals with the storm that on March 21, 2018 hit the Tyrrhenian coast of Calabria, with wind up 70 km/h causing sea waves 6 – 7 meters high. The first part of the report contains news from press and websites concerning damage caused by the sea. The second part contains the results of on-site surveys carried out by IRPI-Cosenza staff in the most affected placed.
The storm mainly damaged tourist and commercial structures. About 5 million euros of damage were estimated to cultivated fields, especially to the typical “Tropea onion”, cultivated between Lamezia Terme and Campora San Giovanni

The report is available at the following link »

Autors: Angela Aurora Pasqua, Claudia Bruno, Salvatore Guardia, Enzo Valente, Olga Petrucci

From 17 to 27 April 2018, the IRPI researcher Marco Cavalli was hosted at the Universidad Austral de Chile (UACh), with which IRPI has signed a MoU, as part of the bilateral project Italy-Chile CONICYT / ITAL170004 “Volcanic eruption vs. human impact: a comparative analysis between natural and artificial morphological changes along gravel bed rivers in Chile and Italy. Learning from different impacts to better manage the affected riverine environments”.

The project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research of Chile (CONICYT), intends to study the morphological evolution of channels in basins affected by volcanic eruptions and anthropic impacts for a better understanding of sediment transport processes and related risk management.

The activity, carried out in collaboration with Prof. Andrés Iroumé of the Faculty of Forest Sciences and Natural Resources (UACh), Prof. Bruno Mazzorana of the Faculty of Sciences (UACh) and Dr. Lorenzo Picco of the University of Padua, conisted in field surveys in Chilean basins affected by volcanic eruptions and undergoing monitoring activities, and meetings aimed at planning joint research lines for the study of sediment dynamics through the application of geomorphometric techniques.

During the visit, Marco Cavalli held a seminar in the postgraduate course in Geomorfologia Fluvial Avanzada – CITI308 – curriculum of “Magister en Ciencias – Mencion Recursos Hidricos”.

An article containing an interview with Marco Cavalli has been published on the UACh website and can be viewed at the following link: http://noticias.uach.cl/principal.php?pag=noticia-externo&cod=115594

In occasione dell’ VIII Festa della Scienza e Filosofia, che si sta tenendo a Foligno, nella giornata di domani – sabato 28 aprile – alcuni rappresentanti dell’Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica saranno presenti presso lo stand del CNR, sito nel chiostro di Palazzo Trinci.

The Research article ‘Distributed optical fibre sensing for early detection of shallow landslides triggering’ authored by Luca Schenato and Alessandro Pasuto from IRPI Padova and co-workers from the University of Padova, has been selected as one of the top 100 read Earth sciences papers for Scientific Reports in 2017. As specified in the honor communication, “Scientific Reports published more than 1500 Earth sciences papers in 2017, and so a position in the top 100 most highly read articles is an extraordinary achievement – your science is of real value to the research community.”

link1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12610-1 (link to the paper)

link2: https://www.nature.com/collections/zqnrvjdvqw (link to the Top 100 list)

The 3rd Annual Meeting of IGCP 639 will be heald on 16-23 September 2018. The meeting comprises two days of scientific communications in Taranto and four days field trip crossing Southern Italy from the Ionian to Tyrrhenian sea and Sicily, visiting some interesting sites relating sea level changhes in the last millennia. The topics of the meeting include the impact of sea level changes on the coastal geomorphological systems.

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018, Jonathan B. Laronne, professor emeritus of the Department of Geography and Environmental Development of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, will be visiting our Institute.

Professor. Laronne will give a talk entitled “Automatic and continuous monitoring of bedload in gravel bed streams“.

The presentation will be held from 11:00 to 12:00, in the Institute’s lecture hall, in Via della Madonna Alta 126.

For more information, write to f.guzzetti@irpi.cnr.it

Nella giornata di ieri hanno preso servizio presso il nostro Istituto 2 borsiste Margherita Agostini e Margherita Rocchetti, e un assegnista Giuseppe Esposito. Lavoreranno per un periodo di tempo ai progetti SAPERE – Space Advanced Project for Excellence in Research and Enterprise – e STRESS – Strategies, Tools and new data for REsilient Smart Societies” – finanziato dalla Fondazione CARIPLO, per la tematica “Definizione e implementazione di una procedura, basata sulla raccolta e processamento di immagini satellitari, finalizzata alla individuazione di frane di evento e all’aggiornamento di inventari
di frana”. Notevole è l’impegno di tutto il personale IRPI nella partecipazione a progetti nazionali ed internazionali volti anche a promuovere nuove possibilità lavorative e formative.

The Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection is in one of the 4 Research Projects funded under the Agreement on Scientific Cooperation between CNR and the University of Malta (UoM) – Biennial Programme 2018/2019. The Project title is “From population risk perception to social vulnerability in coastal areas subject to climate change: a proposal for risk management strategies in two Mediterranean regions”. Loredana Antronico, Researcher of the IRPI Cosenza office (antronico@irpi.cnr.it), is the scientific responsible for the Italian group.

The principal objectives of the Project  can be summarised in the following items: i) Identification of the population’s awareness, perception and preparation concerning the effects that climate change has on the environment and especially on coastal areas, by means of online questionnaires; ii) Proposal of a specific Index of Social Vulnerability, to be evaluated through the results of the online survey, as reducing/increasing factor of the exposure and the vulnerability of population living in coastal areas; iii) Proposing useful tools to local authorities and to responsible of territory planning and of risk prevision, prevention and management.

L’IRPI ha partecipato all’International Conference Sustainable Technologies for Intelligent Water Management (https://www.iitr.ac.in/stiwm/) con una keynote di Tommaso Moramarco su “Ground and Satellite Observations for Hydrological Applications”. Roorkee. Febbraio 16-19. Successivamente, a New Delhi dal 20 al 22 Febbraio, l’IRPI insieme a USGS e Centre for Ecology & Hydrology UK ha partecipato al Workshop: “Training-Cum-Workshop on State-of-the-Art Hydrometric Data Acquisition and transmission Networks: Measurements and Modelling” promosso dal National Hydrology Project e dalla Banca Mondiale. In tale contesto Tommaso Moramarco ha tenuto 3 ore di seminario sulle tecniche avanzate al suolo e da satellite per il monitoraggio della portata. Il Workshop è organizzato nell’ambito di una proposta progettuale per il ri-ammodernamento della rete idrometrica indiana supportato dalla Banca Mondiale e promosso dal National Hydrology Project con il contributo dell’Indian Central Water Commission e Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. L’IRPI insieme a CEH-UK e USGS è stato individuato come un possibile partner scientifico del progetto.

Maggiori informazioni »

On April 3rd, 2018, Prof. John Laronne, Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben-Gurion University, Israel, visits our headquarter, in Perugia. On this occasion, Prof. Laronne will deliver a presentation on the main results of his research work.

For information: direttore@irpi.cnr.it

Orvieto Scienza, evento arrivato alla sesta edizione, si svolgerà dal 16 e 17 febbraio 2018, presso le sale della sede storica del Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo ad Orvieto (vedi foto in basso).
Tale iniziativa ha l’obiettivo di far conoscere la scienza attraverso approfondimenti su tematiche di grande attualità.
Tutte le attività che accompagnano Orvieto Scienza sono attività didattiche che rappresentano una modalità diversa di fare scuola.
Quest’anno il tema riguarda il rischio del territorio: idrogeologico, sismico, vulcanico, dovuto al cambiamento climatico. Il rischio è dovuto al prodotto di fattori diversi quali la probabilità dell’evento, l’esposizione, la vulnerabilità, che possono ognuno assumere valori diversi in base al fenomeno, al luogo, alle azioni di prevenzione dell’uomo.
Fausto Guzzetti Direttore dell’IRPI CNR terrà un intervento dal titolo “Le frane in Italia: come difendersi?”.

Maggiori informazioni »

I ragazzi dell’ITTS Alessandro Volta di Perugia, più volte in tirocinio presso la sede principale dell’IRPI CNR, che espongono il loro lavoro ad Orvieto Scienza.

Prof. Takashi Oguchi, Professor at the University of Tokyo (Japan), Co-Editor in Chief of Geomorphology (Elsevier) and Chair of the IGU Commission on Hazard and Risk will be visiting tomorrow 15 February 2018 our Institute in Perugia. Alessandro Mondini will be presenting the activities of the Institute, looking for new cooperations in the framework of the IGU.

Some link regarding Takashi Oguchi:
https://www.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pros-e/person/takashi_oguchi/takashi_oguchi.htm
http://oguchaylab.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/IGU_Hazard/index.html

The Helmholtz Centre Potsdam – GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences is the national research centre for Earth sciences in Germany. With approx. 1280 employees, the GFZ is conducting interdisciplinary research on the “System Earth” and the influence of humans on the planet. As a member of the Helmholtz Association, it is part of Germany’s largest science organization. For the group “Early warning and Impact Forecasting” (Section 2.6 / Department 2 “Geophysics”), it invite applications for a PostDoc (m/f) (Job Vacancy No. 0512).
The CATENA project, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), sets out to develop dynamic large-scale modeling schemes for landslide susceptibility, as well as consistent estimates of their potential impact on the exposed communities, within the context of Central Asia.

More info »

The conference New Dimension for Natural Hazards in Asia opened yesterday, February 5, 2018. The conference, organized jointly by AOGS and by the EGU is held in Tagaytay, the Philippines, on the edge of the crater of the Taal volcano.

Today, 6 February, Fausto Guzzetti, Director of the Institute, will hold an invited presentation entitled “Challenges for Operational Forecasting and Early Warning of Rainfall Induced Landslides”

On the day of tomorrow, 7 February, Alessandro Mondini, Researcher at the Institute, will hold a presentation entitled “Spatial Autocorrelation Changes in Multitemporal SAR Images for Automatic Event Landslides Detection, the LANDSLIP Project” and on 8 February another presentation entitled “A Framework for the National/Regional Warning System for Rainfall-Induced Landslides: Examples of Implementation in Italy”.

The full conference program is available here »

From 8 to 13 April 2018 the  General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union – EGU will be held in Vienna, Austria. This is the most important geo-sciences conference in Europe.
Several Institute researcher scientists will contribute with oral presentations and posters at the conference. Our scientists also act as conveners or co-conveners of several scientific sessions.

Link to the event »

Lorenzo Marchi, researcher at the CNR IRPI, is doing a research visit at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (GeoFluv Geomorphology and Fluvial Research Group) in Beer-Sheva (Israel). The visit (from 7 January to 28 February) is partly supported by the Short-Term Mobility 2017 program of CNR. The scientific mission is carried on in the frame of researches developed at the Ben-Gurion University on the morphological evolution of alluvial fans on the west bank of the Dead Sea, which are undergoing fast incision in response to base level fall.

The researches at high-elevation sites continues, thanks to the RiST2 project (co-financed by Fondazione CRT of Torino). The study area is the Bessanese glacial basin. The main research activities consist in the continuation of studies on the relation between climate variability and morphodynamic processes, with particular reference to the role of temperature and the thermal properties of geological materials (e.g. rock, debris, water). The use of micro data logger metrologically referenced and with known uncertainty of measurements allows an innovative approach towards the studied topics.

Project web page at http://geoclimalp.irpi.cnr.it/

Brochure »

Articolo web – del 20 dicembre 2017 – dal sito thehindu.com, inerente il progetto LANDSLIP (al quale partecipa anche l’IRPI CNR) e il secondo “Consortium meeting” svoltosi dall’11 al 15 dicembre 2107 in Coimbatore, India.

Vai all’articolo »

Published the technical guidance document on assessment of glacier and permafrost hazards in mountain regions. The document comes after an intensive process and effort within the GAPHAZ (Glacier and Permafrost Hazards in Mountains) scientific standing group of the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences (IACS) and the International Permafrost Association (IPA).
The IRPI researcher Marta Chiarle from the GeoClimAlp research group contributed to the drafting of the document.

Go to the GAPHAZ webpage »
Go to the document »

Iniziato oggi, 11 dicembre 2017, in Coimbatore, India, il secondo “Consortium meeting” inerente il progetto LANDSLIP – Landslide multi-hazard risk assessment, preparedness and early warning in South Asia integrating meteorology, landscape and society – e proseguirà fino a domani. Tra i membri del gruppo di progetto partecipano i ricercatori dell’IRPI, Alessandro Mondini, Mauro Rossi, Maria Teresa Brunetti, Ivan Marchesini e Silvia Peruccacci. Questo incontro segna un passo ancora in avanti nella collaborazione dell’Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica con le varie realtà asiatiche e internazionali in materia di prevenzione dal rischio da frana.

Foto dei partecipanti al Meeting

Vai al progetto »

The CNR IRPI Geohazard Monitoring Group (GMG) on june of present year carried out an aerial multipurpose survey of an area interested by a landslide reactivation phenomenon over the village of Ponzano (center Italy – Abruzzo district).

The activitiy was performed using an RPAS fixed wing developed by the GMG  equipped with an RGB mirrorless camera and a 5-band multispectral sensor.

The survey; 4,2 square kilometres big; demonstrates the potential of this aircraft,  which allows the simultaneous mapping of RGB and multispectral areas affected by instability, making it possible to characterize areas with high humidity index not detectable with optical images.

Figure 1: sensors bay and aircraft during multispectral calibration process.

Figure 2: multiband image comparison of and area affected by an high humidity index.

For info:
Paolo.allasia@irpi.cnr.it
Marco.baldo@irpi.cnr.it
Danilo.godone@irpi.cnr.it

IRPI is one of the Scientific Partners of the Research&Development Project “SMoRI – Smart Monitoring of basins under high geo-hydrological risk conditions” . The project is funded by Regione Calabria, by means of  POR CALABRIA FESR-FSE 2014-2020 – Line I Promotion of Research and Innovation, Specific Objective 1.2, Action 1.2.2.

The aim of the R&D project is to design and implement an integrated system for monitoring the phenomena determining high geo-hydrological risk conditions. The system will implement a multi-component methodology aimed at monitoring, both in a separate and a synergic way, the several phenomena, by means of sensors that can measure the parameters useful for assessing the risk. The activities will be supported by the specialist skills relating to transmission and security protocols.

The Project SMoRI is carried out by a partnership composed of three Private Companies (SIRFIN SPA – leader -, MARIGENTECH SRL, PROGESIST SRL), two CNR Institutes (IRPI e ISAC) and two Departments of the University of Calabria (Department of Civil Engineering and Department of Biology, Ecology and Earth Sciences).

The CNR-IRPI Unit of the project is coordinated by Roberto Coscarelli  (office of Cosenza).

The project has a 18-month duration.

For information: r.coscarelli@irpi.cnr.it

POR Calabria web site »

The project DOMINO – Dikes and debris flows monitoring by novel optical fiber sensors – to which the IRPI’s PADOVA branch takes part, is one of the projects highlighted in “Research and Innovation” section of the magazine Platinum Aziende & Protagonisti of Il Sole 24 ORE. During the interview, the coordinator of the project, prof. Luca Palmieri, and the head of the IRPI team in the project, dr Alessandro Pasuto, said, “We have started from real needs, from territorial emergencies recorded in recent years: we are scientific partners and we will then have to support the public stakeholders such as Civil Protection, to tackle the increasingly frequent hazards”.

“Research and Innovation” in Platinum Aziende & Protagonisti (p. 83) »

Website project DOMINO »

Si terrà a Palazzo Cesaroni, sede della Assemblea Legislativa della Regione dell’Umbria, lunedì 11 dicembre 2017, un convegno sulla Resilienza delle Città d’Arte ai Disastri Naturali che, partendo dalle linee guida tracciate dall’UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction), si concentrerà sulla situazione italiana per comprenderne le necessità in termini di prevenzione e tutela del patrimonio artistico.

Parteciperà alla tavola rotonda prevista durante il convegno anche il Direttore dell’IRPI CNR Fasuto Guzzetti. Durante il convegno verrà presentato il Centro di Competenze Integrate per la Promozione della Resilienza delle Città d’Arte ai Disastri Naturali in Umbria, Toscana, Marche, CERHER (Centre of Resilience on Heritage).

Vai all’evento »

Nell’ambito della seconda conferenza internazionale Challenges in Geotechnical Engineering, patrocinata dell’International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) e svoltasi a Kyiv (Ucraina) il 20-22 novembre 2017, Giulia Bossi, assegnista dell’IRPI della sede secondaria di Padova, ha ricevuto un premio per la miglior presentazione orale in sessione plenaria. Il premio è stato assegnato anche ai coautori del contributo “A monitoring network to measure the cracks in a tunnel subject to shear deformation induced by a landslide” i ricercatori IRPI della sede secondaria di Padova Luca Schenato e Gianluca Marcato.

Giulia Bossi e Luca Schenato della sede di Padova di IRPI sono stato invitato a presentare due contributi al Seminario d’aggiornamento INGEGNERIA GEOTECNICA MONITORAGGIO, PENDII, DIGHE nell’ambito della VI° Edizione dell’Incontro delle Commissioni di Ingegneria Geotecnica che si è tenuta a Bolzano, il 30 Novembre 2017. La dott.ssa Bossi ha presentato un contributo dal titolo “Confronto tra modelli numerici bidimensionali e tridimensionali per l’analisi di stabilità di frane a geometria complessa” mentre il dott. Schenato ha presentato un contributo dal titolo “Sistemi di monitoraggio in fibra ottica per applicazioni geotecniche e di ingegneria civile: principi e applicazioni”.

Link »

It was officially opened today, in the presence of the Italian Minister of Education, University and Research Valeria Fedeli, his homologue Gang Wan, CNR President Massimo Inguscio and ASI President Roberto Battiston, the China Italy Science, Technology & Innovation Week.
Our Institute is present with the Moon Mapping Research Project (https://www.irpi.cnr.it/en/asi-asi-moon-mapping-project), which studies the topography and the composition of the lunar surface involving students from Italian and Chinese universities.

The Italian team of the Moon Mapping project with the ASI President Battiston and some Chinese colleagues

Sofia Fiorucci of the University of Perugia with Maria Teresa Brunetti, IRPI

At the end of the inauguration ceremony, the students gave to the two Ministers a copy of the map produced under the project.

The consign of the map to the Ministers

Luca Schenato from Padova Office of IRPI will give an invited talk at the plenary session of the 6th International Forum on Opto-electronic Sensor-based Monitoring in Geo-engineering (6th OSMG-2017) that will be held in Nanjing, China on 3-5 November 2017 (http://www.fosmg.com/). The forum theme of this edition is “Frontiers and Applications of Infrastructure Monitoring Technologies”, and Luca Schenato will present his activity about “Application of high-resolution OFDR-based distributed sensing to geotechnical problems: from a large scale physical model of a landslide to the monitoring of a foundation pile”.

Paolo Allasia and Giorgio Lollino of the Turin Section of the IRPI CNR, during a training course organized by the High School in the city of Orvieto have presented an innovative instrument developed and patented by IRPI CNR. The instrument allows robotically inclinometric measurements into the boreholes and is as an alternative approach to manual measurements and traditional in-place inclinometers. During the event, an instrumental demonstration was also carried out near of the famous Rupe di Orvieto.

https://www.irpi.cnr.it/focus/ais/

http://www.altascuola.org/news.php?id=news2

Demonstration of the system on the field (Rupe di Orvieto)

Paolo Allasia and Giorgio Lollino of the Turin Section of IRPI CNR, were invited for a lecture at the University of Shaoxing during the first Rock Mechanics and Engineering Geology Forum. The symposium illustrated the main issues from a geological and engineering point of view of one of the most important and ambitious projects of the 21st century: the Belt and Road (B & R). The IRPI CNR illustrated how innovative monitoring techniques can mitigate the geo-hydrological issues related to this big infrastructure.

http://www.iaeg.info

http://www.sxfrg.org/

Paolo Allasia e Giorgio Lollino at the end of the lecture

Field trip at the Tianhuangping Pumped Storage Power Station

Luca Schenato and Alessandro Pasuto, from the IRPI Padova section, are co-authors of an article appeared in Scientific Reports (from the publishers of Nature) entitled “Distributed optical fiber detection for early detection of shallow landslides triggering”. The paper describes an experiment carried out on a physical model of a shallow landslide monitored with a distributed fiber optic strain system for the measurement of the strain field at the sliding surface. Source: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12610-1

Un nuovo lavoro, che vede tra i coautori i ricercatori dell’IRPI, Loredana Antronico e Roberto Coscarelli, è stato pubblicato sulla rivista International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction: “Geo-hydrological risk perception: A case study in Calabria (Southern Italy)”.

La pubblicazione presenta i risultati di una indagine sulla percezione dei rischi naturali in un’area della Calabria interessata in un recente passato da eventi di dissesto geo-idrologico. Dall’indagine emerge che la popolazione, anche se con un elevato senso civico, non giudica positivamente l’operato degli Enti Locali, sia nell’ambito della gestione del territorio sia nell’ambito della formazione e dell’informazione della comunità. Inoltre, la popolazione, specie quella con un livello di formazione elevato, attribuisce, fra le cause dei fenomeni di dissesto idro-geologico, un ruolo rilevante all’azione antropica, fra cui l’abusivismo edilizio.

Vai all’articolo »

Two CNR IRPI researchers, Mauro Rossi and Marco Cavalli, have recently joined the Editorial Board of PeerJ (https://peerj.com/), a peer-review open access journal indexed in all major abstracting & indexing databases. PeerJ has recently expanded to explicitly include the Environmental Sciences and it is waiving all article processing charges (APCs) in the new subject areas for the next three months.

More details can be found here »

Today, October 24, 2017, an ASI TV crew is hosted at our Institute’s headquarters for making a video clip on the activity carried out under the Moon Mapping project.

The video will be shown during the initial ceremony of the Innovation Forum scheduled for November 14, in Beijing (China), in the presence of the Italian Minister of Education Fedeli and his Chinese homologue Gang.

Questa mattina Hakan Tanyas (PhD @ ITC – The Netherlands) ospite presso la sede IRPI di Peurgia, ha tenuto una breve presentazione del suo lavoro inerente le frane sismo-indotte e loro modellazione basata sulle mappe di scuotimento, al fine di produrre un modello che possa contenere informazioni su diverse variabili geografiche, geologiche e sismologiche.

Un limite alla modellazione – che potrà basarsi su diverse unità cartografiche di riferimento – come ha spiegato Hakan, è posto dalla eterogeneità e qualità dei dati disponibili (inventari di frane e mappe di scuotimento).

Lo scopo della ricerca è fornire in tempi rapidi una valutazione dell’estensione dell’area potenzialmente interessata da frane indotte da eventi sismici, con conseguenze positive sulle operazioni di protezione civile.

Alessandro Mondini, Ricercatore IRPI, è membro della commissione IGU su Hazard and RISK. Il sito sui lavori della commissione è ora disponibile al seguente indirizzo,
http://oguchaylab.csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/IGU_Hazard/index.html

New article published by an IRPI researcher on the Springer journal “Landslides”
Mauro Rossi, an IRPI researcher, is a co-author of a new paper published in “Landslides” (Impact Factor 3.6): “Reliability of water content estimation by profile probe and its effect on slope stability”.
The paper examines the calibration procedure of a probe (i.e. dielectric sensor) for measuring the soil water content and analyses its effects on the slope stability analysis. In shallow partially saturated soils, the use of inappropriate calibration equations may result in differences in soil water content estimate up to 10 percentage points, affecting the correct estimation of the suction stress and of the Factor of Safety.

Link to publication »

La sede di Padova del CNR IRPI ha partecipato il 29 settembre scorso alla Notte dei Ricercatori, evento organizzato a scala europea con lo scopo avvicinare la cittadinanza al mondo della ricerca.
In occasione della Notte dei Ricercatori, l’Area della Ricerca del CNR di Padova è stata aperta al pubblico per delle visite guidate ai laboratori, che hanno visto la partecipazione di circa 100 persone.
I ricercatori del CNR IRPI hanno sottolineato il contributo dei loro studi alla riduzione dei rischi geo-idrologici. Fra le attività presentate si segnalano la definizione di scenari di rischio per le grandi frane, il coinvolgimento della popolazione mediante iniziative di crowdsourcing in occasione di disastri naturali e l’interferometria da satellite.

Ormai è consolidato il gemellaggio tra l’IRPI e l’ITTS Alessandro Volta di Perugia: anche in questo avvio di anno scolastico gli studenti delle quarte e quinte hanno svolto un periodo di Alternanza Scuola Lavoro di quattro settimane presso la sede dell’IRPI di Perugia. I vari gruppi di lavoro coordinati dai ricercatori dell’Istituto, Ivan Marchesini e Mauro Rossi, hanno esposto oggi i risultati raggiunti in questo tirocinio.

I temi scelti, per il workshop mensile dei ragazzi, hanno riguardato ambiti IT di grande attualità per i settori di ricerca del Gruppo di Geomorfologia di Perugia: Analisi di dati meteo-climatici e geografici con restituzione di risultati aggregati e non in forma grafica anche 3D o 4D; Realtà virtuale aumentata per la visualizzazione della geologia del territorio; Utilizzo delle API di twitter per prelevare e geolocalizzare tweet che riguardano eventi connessi a dissesto idrogeologico al fine di creare un database ed analizzarne e mapparne i risultati; Rilevazione di dati sul territorio per mezzo di device mobili; Applicazione web per ottenere un elenco di punti sulla mappa in base alla ricerca di luoghi geologici; Utilizzo di servizi meteo nazionali o globali per interrogazione di reti meteo volontarie.

L’Istituto si appresta inoltre ad ospitare altri gruppi di studenti di altre scuole a partire dagli inizi del 2018.

(Alcuni scatti della giornata odierna: ragazzi al centro con insegnati e ricercatori ai lati)

Differential SAR interferometry (DInSAR) is a technique that allows to detect and measure deformations of the earth’s crust through the analysis of interferogram. Interferograms are generated from two images collected by radar transported on board of artificial satellites. Unlike other kind of sensor used in the remote sensing applications (e.g. optical cameras), radars allow to record the phase of the electromagnetic wave backscattered from the earth’s surface. Through the measurement of this phase, it is possible to reconstruct the target-sensor distance. The phase variations between successive acquisition, caused by mutations on the Earth’s surface, are recorded in the interferograms and represented by a series of fringes. These allow us to locate and quantify the deformation occured. DInSAR technique has been successfully applied to detect the effects on the earth’s surface due to subsidence, landslides, bradyseism, volcanic inflation-deflation cycles and telluric effects. Using two radar images collected by satellites Sentinel-1A/B of the European Space Agency we were able to quantify the deformations induced by the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that stroke Mexico on 19 September 2017.

The interferogram, generated from Sentinel-1A image collected the 17 of September, 2 days before the earthquake, and the acquisition the twin mission Sentinel-1B, post-event, 6 days later, shows clear concentric fringes in the area surrounding the epicenter (Figure 1).

(Figure 1: Interferometric fringes caused by the M 7.1 earthquake that stroke Mexico on 19 September 2017)

The phase information was converted in terms of displacement in Figure 2, which reproduces the earthquake effect on the earth surface. The first estimates indicate a crust subsidence (in red) of about 5 cm over an area of more than 1,000 square kilometers. At the margin of this region, two uplifting area (in blue) can be recognized, the most evident located south of the Cuernavaca city, west of the epicenter.

(Figure 2: Displacement map elaborated from the interferogram. Red areas represent the regions where the crust lowered, while the blue ones indicate a surface uplift. Green areas have not undergone variations.)

The work was carried out by Matteo Mantovani, IRPI CNR researcher at the Padua office.

Nell’ambito della Conferenza Internazionale REMTECH ESONDA EXPO (20-22 Settembre 2017, Ferrara, http://www.remtechexpo.com/it/esonda/smart-rivers-awards) sono stati assegnati gli Smart Rivers UNESCO Alta Scuola Rem Tech Awards. Il premio come Best Paper – categoria A è stato attribuito al contributo ‘Levee body vulnerability to seepage and impact of animal burrows’ di Michela Rosa Palladino, Silvia Barbetta, Stefania Camici, Pierluigi Claps e Tommaso Moramarco. Il lavoro descrive in sintesi l’attività svolta da M. R. Palladino nell’ambito del lavoro di tesi di dottorato in Ingegneria Ambientale (Politecnico di Torino, CICLO XXIX) svolto in stretta collaborazione con l’IRPI-CNR di Perugia (Tutors: Pierluigi Claps e Silvia Barbetta).

“The Outstanding Reviewer program is one way that OSA is able to express its appreciation to those who have worked so conscientiously and tirelessly on behalf of our journals. OSA congratulates the 2017 class of Outstanding Reviewers for their well-deserved recognition and thanks the thousands of other volunteers worldwide who continuously participate in our rigorous peer-review process.” [Elizabeth Nolan, Deputy Executive Director of The Optical Society and Chief Publishing Officer].

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IRPI is one of the Principal Investigators of the project “INDECIS – INtegrated approach for the DEvelopment across Europe of user oriented Climate Indicators for GFCS high-priority Sectors: agriculture, disaster risk reduction, energy, health, water and tourism”, funded by EC by means the the “ERA4CS Joint Call  – Topic B: Researching and Advancing Climate Service Development by Institutional Integration”.

The INDECIS project will develop an integrated approach to produce a set of relevant climate indices targeting the high priority sectors of the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Framework for Climate Services (agriculture, disaster risk reduction, energy, health, water) plus tourism. Moreover, models and tools will be developed for  near-real time calculation, spatial interpolation, visualization and communication of climate monitoring.

With these aims, the INDECIS project will inventory and catalog existing datasets of precipitation, temperature, wind speed and sunshine duration. New methods and tools will be developed to operationally assure the quality and homogeneity of data sets. In parallel, information on climate indicators will be gathered and works to improve them in consultation with the stakeholdes will be carried out.

The staff of the INDECIS project, coordinated by Enric Aguillar of the University Rovira I Virgili/Center for Climate Change (C3) – Spain,  is composed by: University of Reading (UK), Finnish Meteorological Institute (FIN), BRGM/Water Division (F), CNR – IRPI (I), Universidad de Cantabria / Environmental Hydraulics Institute (E), Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (S), Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government (IRL), Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (E), Barcelona Supercomputer Center (BSC)/Earth Sciences Department (E), FCiencias.ID – Associacao para a Investigacao e Desenvolvimento de Ciencias (P), Global Change Research Institute – Czech Academy of Sciences (CZ), Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (NL), Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium – Meteorological and Climatological Research  (B), National Meteorological Administration (RO), Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología/Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (E).

The CNR Unit of the project is coordinated by Roberto Coscarelli (IRPI – office of Cosenza).

The start of the project, that has a 3-year duration, is fixed in 15/09/2017.

Per informazioni: r.coscarelli@irpi.cnr.it

Link to the project web page »

L’Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica e l’Indian Institute of Technology di Roorkee hanno firmato un Protocollo di Intesa per promuovere una collaborazione scientifica nel campo dei Rischi Naturali. In particolare, oltre alla mobilità di ricercatori di ciascuna istituzione e l’organizzazione congiunta di corsi, workshop e conferenze, il Protocollo prevede lo sviluppo sinergico di attività di ricerca che mirano all’avanzamento delle conoscenze nei processi di base dei fenomeni dei rischi naturali in un contesto di cambiamenti globali. In tale ambito, è previsto lo scambio di informazioni, risorse e competenze riguardanti attività in materia di monitoraggio idrometeorologico (al suolo e da satellite), piene improvvise e fenomeni alluvionali, siccità, frane, acque sotterranee, fusione dei ghiacciai, cambiamenti climatici, ricerca e innovazione tecnologica.

According to the Geomorphology journal’s website, the article “Cavalli, M., Trevisani, S., Comiti, F., Marchi, L., 2013. Geomorphometric assessment of spatial sediment connectivity in small Alpine catchments. Geomorphology, 188, 31-41, doi: 10.1016 / j.geomorph.2012.05.007 “is, to date, among the 10 articles published since 2012 which have received the highest number of citations. Two of the authors (Marco Cavalli and Lorenzo Marchi) are researchers at the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection.
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/geomorphology/most-cited-articles

Luca Brocca, researcher of IRPI-CNR, is coauthor of a paper published on the High Impact journal Reviews on Geophysics (IF 12.3): “Validation practices for satellite based earth observation data across communities”.
The paper reviews state-of-the-art methods of satellite validation across different scientific communities and documents their similarities and differences. First the overall validation objectives and terminologies are specified, followed by a generic mathematical formulation of the validation problem. An outlook on the applicability and requirements of current Earth Observation validation approaches and targets is given.
The paper would serve as a reference for the future studies addressed to the validation of satellite observations.

Link:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017RG000562/abstract

L’articolo “Statistical approaches for the definition of landslide rainfall thresholds and their uncertainty using rain gauge and satellite data” – ( Rossi, M., Luciani, S., Valigi, D., Kirschbaum, D., Brunetti, M. T., Peruccacci, S., & Guzzetti, F. (2017). Statistical approaches for the definition of landslide rainfall thresholds and their uncertainty using rain gauge and satellite data. Geomorphology, 285, 16-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2017.02.001) – pubblicato dalla rivista Geomorphology è, ad oggi, tra i 25 più scaricati della rivista. La pubblicazione ha tra i vari autori alcuni ricercatori dell’Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica: Mauro Rossi, Maria Teresa Brunetti, Silvia Peruccacci e Fausto Guzzetti (Direttore).

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