Cinzia Bianchi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Cinzia Bianchi
<p>Most commonly, geo-hydrological hazards (i.e., landslide, flood, sinkhole) occur... more <p>Most commonly, geo-hydrological hazards (i.e., landslide, flood, sinkhole) occur in response to a single trigger like an intense rainfall event, a prolonged rainfall period, a rapid snowmelt event, an earthquake. Multiple damaging processes (phenomena) occurring in response to a single trigger can cause a cumulative socio-economic impact, which is often difficult to quantify and to attribute to each single damaging processes (landslide, or a group of landslides, or a single inundation). As a consequence, after a geo-hydrological disaster occurs, media, insurance companies and international institutions publish numerous assessments of the cost of the disaster based on different methodologies and approaches, often reaching different results. At European level, EC Directives related to natural hazards prove standards for the collection of data focusing their attention mainly on codifying the processes, their attributes and their spatial extent, leaving out the important issue of rigorously classifying the damaged elements and the loss data. Lack of standards contributes negatively to the paucity of damage information and cost data, fundamental for the successive ex-post analysis aimed at quantitatively risk evaluation. In Italy, despite the frequency of the significant socio-economic impacts due to geo-hydrological hazards, few attempts have been made to estimate the economic cost of geo-hydrological hazards. These loss estimations are mainly based on cost components of the public budget for post-event restorations and reimbursements, hampering the possibility to distinguish between the private and public sector losses. The loss estimates do not distinguish the costs (i) by type of processes (landslides, flash floods, floods and other damaging events) responsible for the damage, and (ii) by expenditure items (restoration actions or mitigation activities). LAND-deFeND, a recently developed database structure, represents an effort to manage all the issues that can arise when storing, organizing and analysing information on losses related to geo-hydrological hazards with different levels of accuracy and at different geographical scales, from the national to the local scale.</p>
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2016
Floods and landslides are common phenomena that cause serious damage and pose a severe threat to ... more Floods and landslides are common phenomena that cause serious damage and pose a severe threat to the population of Italy. The social and economic impact of floods and landslides in Italy is severe, and strategies to target the mitigation of the effects of these phenomena are needed. In the last few years, the scientific community has started to use web technology to communicate information on geohydrological hazards and the associated risks. However, the communication is often targeted at technical experts. In the attempt to communicate relevant information on geohydrological hazards with potential human consequences to a broader audience, we designed the POpoLazione A RISchio (POLARIS) website. POLARIS publishes accurate information on geohydrological risk to the population of Italy, including periodic reports on landslide and flood risk, analyses of specific damaging events and blog posts on landslide and flood events. By monitoring the access to POLARIS in the 21-month period bet...
Geophysical Monograph Series, 2015
Landslide Science and Practice, 2013
Landslides and floods are widespread and recurrent in Italy, where they cause damage and pose a t... more Landslides and floods are widespread and recurrent in Italy, where they cause damage and pose a threat to the population. To estimate geo-hydrological risk in Italy, catalogues of landslide and flood events that have caused damage to the population were compiled from a variety of sources. The catalogues covers the 1,943-year period from 68 A.D. to 2010, and list 3,310 landslide events and 2,624 flood events that have resulted in deaths, missing persons, injured people, and homeless. For each event in the catalogue, different types of information were collected and organized in a database. We describe the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) we have implemented to collect, store, analyze, and disseminate the historical information, and results of the analysis of landslide and flood risk to the population.
Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2010
, +39 075.5014420) Landslides cause damage to people every year in Italy. The number of fatalitie... more , +39 075.5014420) Landslides cause damage to people every year in Italy. The number of fatalities (deaths and missing persons) and the number of casualties (deaths, missing persons, and injured people) are a direct, quantitative measure of the intensity of a disaster, and can be used to evaluate individual and societal risk quantitatively. Individual-risk criteria are expressed using mortality (or death) rates, which are given by the number of deaths per 100,000 people, in a given period. Societal-risk criteria are commonly established constructing frequency-consequences plots. In these plots, the number of losses (deaths, fatalities, or casualties) in each event is plotted versus the frequency of the event. Societal risk is then determined investigating the relationships linking the frequency of the events to their intensity, measured by the number of the losses. We have updated existing estimates of societal and individual landslide risk in Italy. For our assessment, we have used an improved version of the catalogue of historical landslide events that have resulted in loss of life, missing persons, injured people, and homelessness in Italy, from 1850 to 2008. This is the recent portion of a larger catalogue spanning the 1941-year period from 68 AD to 2008. This information was used to update the existing national estimates and to obtain first regional estimates of societal and individual landslide risk in Italy. To model the distribution of the frequency of landslide events with casualties in Italy, and in each of the 20 Regions in Italy, we adopted a Zipf distribution. We used the scaling exponent of the probability mass function (PMF) of the intensity of the events, which controls the proportion of small, medium and large events, to compare societal landslide risk levels in different geographical areas and for different periods. To consider the frequency of the events with casualties, we have scaled the PMF obtained for the individual Regions to the total number of events in each Region, in the period 1950-2008. We have used the results to rank societal landslide risk in the different Regions. For the same period, statistics on the number of people in Italy are available, for the 8102 individual Italian municipalities. By combining this information with the yearly number of landslide casualties, we have estimated the landslide death rates in each Region, for the period 1950-2008. For Regions where landslide risk was found particularly large, we have attempted a quantitative estimation of the total number of people exposed to landslide risk.
Science of The Total Environment
Floods and landslides are frequent and destructive geo-hydrological hazards that cause harm to pe... more Floods and landslides are frequent and destructive geo-hydrological hazards that cause harm to people every year. We analysed data on 1292 landslide and 771 flood fatalities that occurred in Italy in the 50-year period 1965-2014, to determine the dependence of the fatalities on gender and age and the circumstances of death by type of hazard. The multinomial probability mass function of the expected fatalities by gender and age, as reported by national census data, were estimated and compared with the observed landslide and flood fatalities. We identified the age categories over or under represented when the observed fatalities were respectively higher or lower than the modelled expected deaths. We found that in Italy males are more vulnerable to floods and landslides for most of the age categories. Apart from children, males are over-represented up to the age of 89 for floods and up to 79 for landslides, whereas females are under-represented up to the age of 59 for floods and landslides, and over-represented above 70 for floods and between 60 and 79 for landslides. To consider the demographic and socio-cultural changes over time, we performed a temporal analysis splitting the record into two non-overlapping subsets of 25year each. The analysis demonstrated that the over-representation of males compared to the females, both for landslide and flood is statistically significant and does not vary in time, indicating a different propensity towards the risk taking and a different degree of exposure between males and females. Analysis of the data allowed to identify the common circumstances of death. Landslides fatalities occurred frequently indoor, whereas the majority of the flood fatalities occurred outdoor, outlining the different dynamics of the hazards. Floods killed numerous people along roads and drivers or passengers travelling in vehicles. We expect that the results of this work will be helpful to design recommendations for self-protecting actions, and proactive policies that can contribute to reduce the human toll of floods and landslides in Italy, and elsewhere.
<p>Most commonly, geo-hydrological hazards (i.e., landslide, flood, sinkhole) occur... more <p>Most commonly, geo-hydrological hazards (i.e., landslide, flood, sinkhole) occur in response to a single trigger like an intense rainfall event, a prolonged rainfall period, a rapid snowmelt event, an earthquake. Multiple damaging processes (phenomena) occurring in response to a single trigger can cause a cumulative socio-economic impact, which is often difficult to quantify and to attribute to each single damaging processes (landslide, or a group of landslides, or a single inundation). As a consequence, after a geo-hydrological disaster occurs, media, insurance companies and international institutions publish numerous assessments of the cost of the disaster based on different methodologies and approaches, often reaching different results. At European level, EC Directives related to natural hazards prove standards for the collection of data focusing their attention mainly on codifying the processes, their attributes and their spatial extent, leaving out the important issue of rigorously classifying the damaged elements and the loss data. Lack of standards contributes negatively to the paucity of damage information and cost data, fundamental for the successive ex-post analysis aimed at quantitatively risk evaluation. In Italy, despite the frequency of the significant socio-economic impacts due to geo-hydrological hazards, few attempts have been made to estimate the economic cost of geo-hydrological hazards. These loss estimations are mainly based on cost components of the public budget for post-event restorations and reimbursements, hampering the possibility to distinguish between the private and public sector losses. The loss estimates do not distinguish the costs (i) by type of processes (landslides, flash floods, floods and other damaging events) responsible for the damage, and (ii) by expenditure items (restoration actions or mitigation activities). LAND-deFeND, a recently developed database structure, represents an effort to manage all the issues that can arise when storing, organizing and analysing information on losses related to geo-hydrological hazards with different levels of accuracy and at different geographical scales, from the national to the local scale.</p>
Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2016
Floods and landslides are common phenomena that cause serious damage and pose a severe threat to ... more Floods and landslides are common phenomena that cause serious damage and pose a severe threat to the population of Italy. The social and economic impact of floods and landslides in Italy is severe, and strategies to target the mitigation of the effects of these phenomena are needed. In the last few years, the scientific community has started to use web technology to communicate information on geohydrological hazards and the associated risks. However, the communication is often targeted at technical experts. In the attempt to communicate relevant information on geohydrological hazards with potential human consequences to a broader audience, we designed the POpoLazione A RISchio (POLARIS) website. POLARIS publishes accurate information on geohydrological risk to the population of Italy, including periodic reports on landslide and flood risk, analyses of specific damaging events and blog posts on landslide and flood events. By monitoring the access to POLARIS in the 21-month period bet...
Geophysical Monograph Series, 2015
Landslide Science and Practice, 2013
Landslides and floods are widespread and recurrent in Italy, where they cause damage and pose a t... more Landslides and floods are widespread and recurrent in Italy, where they cause damage and pose a threat to the population. To estimate geo-hydrological risk in Italy, catalogues of landslide and flood events that have caused damage to the population were compiled from a variety of sources. The catalogues covers the 1,943-year period from 68 A.D. to 2010, and list 3,310 landslide events and 2,624 flood events that have resulted in deaths, missing persons, injured people, and homeless. For each event in the catalogue, different types of information were collected and organized in a database. We describe the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) we have implemented to collect, store, analyze, and disseminate the historical information, and results of the analysis of landslide and flood risk to the population.
Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2010
, +39 075.5014420) Landslides cause damage to people every year in Italy. The number of fatalitie... more , +39 075.5014420) Landslides cause damage to people every year in Italy. The number of fatalities (deaths and missing persons) and the number of casualties (deaths, missing persons, and injured people) are a direct, quantitative measure of the intensity of a disaster, and can be used to evaluate individual and societal risk quantitatively. Individual-risk criteria are expressed using mortality (or death) rates, which are given by the number of deaths per 100,000 people, in a given period. Societal-risk criteria are commonly established constructing frequency-consequences plots. In these plots, the number of losses (deaths, fatalities, or casualties) in each event is plotted versus the frequency of the event. Societal risk is then determined investigating the relationships linking the frequency of the events to their intensity, measured by the number of the losses. We have updated existing estimates of societal and individual landslide risk in Italy. For our assessment, we have used an improved version of the catalogue of historical landslide events that have resulted in loss of life, missing persons, injured people, and homelessness in Italy, from 1850 to 2008. This is the recent portion of a larger catalogue spanning the 1941-year period from 68 AD to 2008. This information was used to update the existing national estimates and to obtain first regional estimates of societal and individual landslide risk in Italy. To model the distribution of the frequency of landslide events with casualties in Italy, and in each of the 20 Regions in Italy, we adopted a Zipf distribution. We used the scaling exponent of the probability mass function (PMF) of the intensity of the events, which controls the proportion of small, medium and large events, to compare societal landslide risk levels in different geographical areas and for different periods. To consider the frequency of the events with casualties, we have scaled the PMF obtained for the individual Regions to the total number of events in each Region, in the period 1950-2008. We have used the results to rank societal landslide risk in the different Regions. For the same period, statistics on the number of people in Italy are available, for the 8102 individual Italian municipalities. By combining this information with the yearly number of landslide casualties, we have estimated the landslide death rates in each Region, for the period 1950-2008. For Regions where landslide risk was found particularly large, we have attempted a quantitative estimation of the total number of people exposed to landslide risk.
Science of The Total Environment
Floods and landslides are frequent and destructive geo-hydrological hazards that cause harm to pe... more Floods and landslides are frequent and destructive geo-hydrological hazards that cause harm to people every year. We analysed data on 1292 landslide and 771 flood fatalities that occurred in Italy in the 50-year period 1965-2014, to determine the dependence of the fatalities on gender and age and the circumstances of death by type of hazard. The multinomial probability mass function of the expected fatalities by gender and age, as reported by national census data, were estimated and compared with the observed landslide and flood fatalities. We identified the age categories over or under represented when the observed fatalities were respectively higher or lower than the modelled expected deaths. We found that in Italy males are more vulnerable to floods and landslides for most of the age categories. Apart from children, males are over-represented up to the age of 89 for floods and up to 79 for landslides, whereas females are under-represented up to the age of 59 for floods and landslides, and over-represented above 70 for floods and between 60 and 79 for landslides. To consider the demographic and socio-cultural changes over time, we performed a temporal analysis splitting the record into two non-overlapping subsets of 25year each. The analysis demonstrated that the over-representation of males compared to the females, both for landslide and flood is statistically significant and does not vary in time, indicating a different propensity towards the risk taking and a different degree of exposure between males and females. Analysis of the data allowed to identify the common circumstances of death. Landslides fatalities occurred frequently indoor, whereas the majority of the flood fatalities occurred outdoor, outlining the different dynamics of the hazards. Floods killed numerous people along roads and drivers or passengers travelling in vehicles. We expect that the results of this work will be helpful to design recommendations for self-protecting actions, and proactive policies that can contribute to reduce the human toll of floods and landslides in Italy, and elsewhere.