Landslide Hazard and Risk Assessment for Civil Protection Early Response

This paper presents a series of severe landslide disasters occurred in Italy, during which the local scientific community supported civil protection authorities in the management of the emergency responses. Depending on the event characteristics, scientific support focused on landslide mapping, damage assessment, monitoring, early warning, and designing of countermeasures. Relevant studies, published after the disasters and describing these activities, highlight that, in case of major events, the scientific community can provide a significant support in decision-making processes and intervention strategies, by means of multi-disciplinary skills, experience and resources. The Italian example of cooperation between the scientific community and civil protection authorities here described highlights as a knowledge transfer from theoretical frameworks to practical applications can optimize the disaster response operations. Even if this study focuses on the Italian situation, it may represents a starting point to evaluate the real contribution provided by landslide experts in disaster responses worldwide, for understanding weaknesses and strengths. In many countries, in fact, local authorities are not able to provide timely and effective responses also because of a lacking or insufficient support of scientists.