Assessment of Landslide Risk and Mitigation in Mountain Areas
The general objective of the Alarm project is to gain a better understanding of processes, mechanisms and events generating natural hazards and risks, in particular morpho-hydro-geological ones like landslides. A review of legislation and rules in European countries, of GIS analytical procedures for hazard studies, GIS techniques and multimedia tools, leads to propose and apply methodologies for assessing hazard, vulnerability and risk in the study areas.
Essential features of this project are, on the one hand, the integration of socio-economic and natural process factors with the aim of providing comprehensive information on natural hazards as well as their consequences for society, and, on the other hand, the appeal to GIS and information technology for the creation of database infrastructures, spatial data analysis, cartographic representation of hazard and risk, guidelines for mitigation actions, and communication with the decision makers and the general public.
The project is part of theme four of the Fifth RTD Framework Programme of the European Commission: “Energy, Environment and Sustainable Development” and will last 36 months (December 2001 – November 2004). See also the programme page on the Europa Server. Ten participants from 6 different countries (France, Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain) are involved in the project. Five different study areas are used as representative samples of landslide prone areas, each in a different economic and human context.
The SPINlab is responsible for the execution of workpackage two: GIS techniques and multimedia tools; predictive modelling applications and training. See the Alarm website workpackage 2 description for an overview of the work activities.