Domenico Calcaterra | Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II" (original) (raw)
Papers by Domenico Calcaterra
Geosciences, 2021
In the present paper, the capillary barrier formation at the interface between soil layers, which... more In the present paper, the capillary barrier formation at the interface between soil layers, which is characterized by textural discontinuities, has been analyzed. This mechanism has been investigated by means of a finite element model of a two-layer soil stratification. The two considered formations, belonging to the pyroclastic succession of the “Pomici di Base” Plinian eruption (22 ka, Santacroce et al., 2008) of the Somma–Vesuvius volcano, are affected by shallow instability phenomena likely caused by progressive saturation during the rainfall events. This mechanism could be compatible with the formation of capillary barriers at the interface between layers of different grain size distributions during infiltration. One-dimensional infiltration into the stratified soil was parametrically simulated considering rainfall events of increasing intensity and duration. The variations in the suction and degree of saturation over time allowed for the evaluation of stability variations in t...
Water, 2021
Rainfall-induced shallow landslides represent a serious threat in hilly and mountain areas around... more Rainfall-induced shallow landslides represent a serious threat in hilly and mountain areas around the world. The mountainous landscape of the Cinque Terre (eastern Liguria, Italy) is increasingly popular for both Italian and foreign tourists, most of which visit this outstanding terraced coastal landscape to enjoy a beach holiday and to practice hiking. However, this area is characterized by a high level of landslide hazard due to intense rainfalls that periodically affect its rugged and steep territory. One of the most severe events occurred on 25 October 2011, causing several fatalities and damage for millions of euros. To adequately address the issues related to shallow landslide risk, it is essential to develop landslide susceptibility models as reliable as possible. Regrettably, most of the current land-use and urban planning approaches only consider the susceptibility to landslide detachment, neglecting transit and runout processes. In this study, the adoption of a combined ap...
Remote Sensing, 2020
An increasing number of satellite platforms provide daily images of the Earth’s surface that can ... more An increasing number of satellite platforms provide daily images of the Earth’s surface that can be used in quantitative monitoring applications. However, their cost and the need for specific processing software make such products not often suitable for rapid mapping and deformation tracking. Google Earth images have been used in a number of mapping applications and, due to their free and rapid accessibility, they have contributed to partially overcome this issue. However, their potential in Earth’s surface displacement tracking has not yet been explored. In this paper, that aspect is analyzed providing a specific procedure and related MATLAB™ code to derive displacement field maps using digital image correlation of successive Google Earth images. The suitability of the procedure and the potential of such images are demonstrated here through their application to two relevant case histories, namely the Slumgullion landslide in Colorado and the Miage debris-covered glacier in Italy. R...
Water, 2020
The change of the Earth’s climate and the increasing human action (e.g., increasing impervious ar... more The change of the Earth’s climate and the increasing human action (e.g., increasing impervious areas) are influencing the recurrence and magnitude of flooding events and consequently the exposure of urban and rural communities. Under these conditions, flood hazard analysis needs to account for this change through the adoption of nonstationary approaches. Such methods, showing how flood hazard evolves over time, are able to support a long-term plan of adaptation in hazard changing perspective, reducing expected annual damage in flood prone areas. On this basis, in this paper a reevaluation of flood hazard in the Benevento province of southern Italy, is presented, providing a reduced complexity methodological framework for near future flood hazard prediction under nonstationary conditions. The proposed procedure uses multiple nonstationary probability models and a LiDAR-derived high-resolution inundation model to provide present and future flood scenarios in the form of hazard maps. S...
Sustainability, 2020
In this work, experiences from the use of bioengineering techniques as geo-hydrological risk miti... more In this work, experiences from the use of bioengineering techniques as geo-hydrological risk mitigation measures within the territory of Cinque Terre National Park (Eastern Liguria, Italy) after an extreme rainfall event that occurred on 25 October 2011 are described. This rainstorm was responsible for intense erosive processes and triggered numerous shallow landslides, causing severe structural and economic damage. After this disastrous event, many bioengineering interventions were planned to stabilize the most unstable slopes and the most problematic streams. Based on multidisciplinary studies and field surveys, an inventory of the executed bioengineering works was compiled. Subsequently, on the basis of expert judgement, both the efficiency and effectiveness of the works three years after their construction were examined. Furthermore, the compliance of the executed works with the design requirements was analysed. This study revealed that some of the investigated works lack post-i...
Remote Sensing, 2020
Climate change has increased the likelihood of the occurrence of disasters like wildfires, floods... more Climate change has increased the likelihood of the occurrence of disasters like wildfires, floods, storms, and landslides worldwide in the last years. Weather conditions change continuously and rapidly, and wildfires are occurring repeatedly and diffusing with higher intensity. The burnt catchments are known, in many parts of the world, as one of the main sensitive areas to debris flows characterized by different trigger mechanisms (runoff-initiated and debris slide-initiated debris flow). The large number of studies produced in recent decades has shown how the response of a watershed to precipitation can be extremely variable, depending on several on-site conditions, as well as the characteristics of precipitation duration and intensity. Moreover, the availability of satellite data has significantly improved the ability to identify the areas affected by wildfires, and, even more importantly, to carry out post-fire assessment of burnt areas. Many difficulties have to be faced in att...
Geological Society, London, Engineering Geology Special Publications, 2010
Data Revues 12962074 00050002 04000354, May 19, 2008
Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Landslides, June 28 -July 2, 2004 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2004
ABSTRACT Landslides detection and mapping are fundamental requirements for every hazard and risk ... more ABSTRACT Landslides detection and mapping are fundamental requirements for every hazard and risk evaluation. Due to their inevitable shortcomings, geomorphological field surveys and airphoto interpretation do not document all the gravitational events. Indeed some unstable slopes are inaccessible to field surveyors, while some landslides are too slow to be detected with the naked eye or interpretation of aerial photographs. In this work, we integrate geomorphological surveys with ground motion data derived by employing COSMO-SkyMed satellite imagery and the Intermittent Small BAseline Subset (ISBAS; Sowter et al., 2013), a new Advanced Differential Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (ADInSAR) technique which has been developed recently at the Nottingham University in the UK. The main advantage of ISBAS with respect to other InSAR and SBAS techniques, is the possibility to detect good radar reflectors even in non-urbanized terrain, where ground targets usually look intermittently coherent, meaning they have high coherence only in some interferograms but not in others. ISBAS has proven capable of increasing results over natural, woodland and agricultural terrains and, as a result, it makes it possible to improve the detection of landslide boundaries and the assessment of the state of activity where other InSAR approaches fail. We used COSMO-SkyMed StripMap data covering the period between November 2008 and October 2011, with 3m ground range resolution, 40° look angle and minimum revisiting time of 8 days. The data consist of 38 ascending images (track 133, frame 380) with ground track angle at scene centre of 169.5° from the north-south direction. These have been obtained thanks to an agreement between the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea and the University of Naples “Federico II”. We tested ISBAS in north-western Sicily (southern Italy), over a 1,530 km2 area where 1,473 landslides have been identified based on optical imagery and field surveys by the local Hydro-geomorphological Setting Plan published in 2006. The geological and tectonic setting of the area, related to the Apenninic-Maghrebian Chain orogeny, makes most of the instability phenomena of complex or flow type with an extremely slow to very slow velocity, namely very suitable for an interferometric analysis. We show the results for Piana degli Albanesi, a thrust faults-bounded basin located in the northern Mt. Kumeta massif, filled in with Lower Miocene marls and pelitic deposits. Here landslide risk affects housing and public infrastructure (e.g. the SP34, the SP38 and SP102 highways), and the unstable slopes extend up to a gravity masonry dam, such as to require continuous rebuilding of infrastructures in the portions with the higher displacement rates. The ISBAS results for ascending geometry entail an unprecedented 685,518 points in a 90 km2 extended processing area, and their Line Of Sight velocities range between -6.4 mm/yr (away from the sensor) and +6.6mm/yr (towards the sensor). ISBAS results detect a total of 89 mapped landslides, of which 23 are previously not recorded. The analysis of ISBAS COSMO-SKyMed time-series allows us to compare the deformation trends to rainfall events, and to evaluate the correlation between heavy or prolonged rainfall and accelerations in the ground motion histories of the identified landslides.
Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, 2001
Recently, slope disaster has occurred in regions around urban area and along highways in Malay Pe... more Recently, slope disaster has occurred in regions around urban area and along highways in Malay Peninsula. The disaster is a major factor that disturbs the sustainable development in the country. It is important to understand high potential regions of landslide and to predict slope disaster based on geotechnical and geological engineering for a sustainable development. Historical data of slope disaster helps us to understand the regional characteristics of landslide and the mechanism. The purpose of this study is to develop a historical landslide database in Malay Peninsula. The database can be available on GIS. The developed historical landslide database has been used with related information to landslide on GIS for investigation of characteristics of landslide in Malay Peninsula. In order to evaluate the hazard of slope failure in the whole Malay Peninsula, the spatial relationships between locations of historical landslides and the related information with slope failure have been investigated. Finally, the locations of historical landslide events are plotted on the proposed hazard map for confirming the applicability.
Landslide Science and Practice, 2013
A first inventory of landslides responsible for river damming in Campania region (Italy) is here ... more A first inventory of landslides responsible for river damming in Campania region (Italy) is here presented. Based upon archival research, cartography analysis, air-photo interpretation and field survey, thirty-six landslide dams have been recognized, along with four dams related to mixed fans. The inventoried cases have been classified according to the existing schemes; however, considering the peculiar features of the case studies, some new dam types have been introduced. Finally, a basic statistical analysis has been carried out, which revealed a good correlation among some environmental and geomorphometric variables.
Remote Sensing of Environment, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper presents the application of Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) inter... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the application of Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry (DInSAR) algorithms for the precise monitoring of earth dams ground deformation. The test site selected for this study is the Conza Dam, located in the southern Apennines (Italy), very close to the epicenter of the big earthquake (Mw = 6.9) which took place on November 23th, 1980, striking the Irpinia region. Among the multiple advanced DInSAR techniques developed by the SAR community during the last decade, this work uses the so-called SUBSOFT software, developed by the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSLab) group from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), which is based on the use of Coherent Pixels Technique (CPT) algorithm. The analysis is carried out using 51 ENVIronmental SATellite-Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ENVISAT-ASAR) images, corresponding to the period from 29th of November 2002 to the 30th of July 2010. In this framework, ground displacements recorded by a network of conventional ground-based sensors are also available for the same temporal span. Indeed, the embankment dam is well instrumented to measure internal settlements by means of cross-arms placed in six different cross-sections, and superficial displacements by means of targets for precise leveling. A statistical analysis has been performed to carry out a better comparison between the measurements obtained with the conventional field sensors and the interferometric data. The high agreement between final DInSAR displacements and in-situ instrumental data, demonstrates the reliability of such technique for the precise monitoring of civil infrastructures, and concretely, in dams with a high exposure factor and its consequent risk.
Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, 2004
Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2003
Past slope instabilities at Quindici (one of the five towns of Campania that was hit by catastrop... more Past slope instabilities at Quindici (one of the five towns of Campania that was hit by catastrophic landslides on 5 May 1998) and in the Lauro Valley are investigated to improve the understanding of the landslide history in the area, as a mandatory step for the evaluation of the landslide hazard. The research was performed by combining information on past slope instabilities from both historical and geological data. From numerous historical sources an archive consisting of 45 landsliding and flooding events for the period 1632-1998 was compiled. Landslide activity was also investigated by means of interpretation of multi-year sets of aerial photos, production of Landslide Activity Maps, and excavation of trenches on the alluvial fans at the mountain foothills. Detailed stratigraphic analysis of the sections exposed in the trenches identified landslide events as the main geomorphic process responsible for building up the fans in the study area. Integration of historical and geological approaches provides significant insight into past and recent instability at Quindici. This is particularly valuable in view of the limitations of individual sources of information. Application of such an approach offers potential for improved hazard assessment and risk mitigation.
Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2005
As many other Italian towns, the historical center of Sassari was built using materials of prevai... more As many other Italian towns, the historical center of Sassari was built using materials of prevailing local provenance. This is the reason why, following the program research of the Progetto Finalizzato “Beni Culturali”, the survey of materials constituting the buildings of the ancient city center ...
International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2011
Landslides are recognized as one of the most damaging natural hazards in Italy. Campania region r... more Landslides are recognized as one of the most damaging natural hazards in Italy. Campania region represents a complex geological setting, where mass movements of different types are widespread, and urban expansion can be increasingly seen by the presence of buildings and infrastructure in landslide-prone areas. In such a context, monitoring of unstable slopes represents a key activity in the process
Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2010
The marbles exploited between Vitulano and Cautano (Benevento province, Campania region, Italy), ... more The marbles exploited between Vitulano and Cautano (Benevento province, Campania region, Italy), have been widely utilized (at least from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century) in several important monumental buildings of the region, due to their good properties and peculiar aesthetic qualities. They are limestones deriving from the filling of palaeo-cavities, carved into an emerged Cretaceous calcareous platform, by calcareous breccias, bauxite and alabastrine deposits. Such cavities are the result of both jointing and karst processes. The studied outcrops of the Vitulano Marbles are affected by a complex joint pattern in terms of attitude and spacing, which results in rock blocks highly variable in volume. Regarding the mineralogical composition, calcite is definitely predominant whereas the insoluble residue is constituted by low amounts of dolomite, bohemite, ematite and kaolinite. The petrophysical characterization put in evidence fairly good geomechanical properties, o...
Weathered igneous and metamorphic rocks widely crop out in the Mediterranean area, where in recen... more Weathered igneous and metamorphic rocks widely crop out in the Mediterranean area, where in recent years greater attention has been paid to weathering-related slope movements. Calabria, the southernmost region of the Italian peninsula, is one of the most challenging area where to study such topic. Many factors favoured during past times onset and development of the weathering processes in Calabria:
Geosciences, 2021
In the present paper, the capillary barrier formation at the interface between soil layers, which... more In the present paper, the capillary barrier formation at the interface between soil layers, which is characterized by textural discontinuities, has been analyzed. This mechanism has been investigated by means of a finite element model of a two-layer soil stratification. The two considered formations, belonging to the pyroclastic succession of the “Pomici di Base” Plinian eruption (22 ka, Santacroce et al., 2008) of the Somma–Vesuvius volcano, are affected by shallow instability phenomena likely caused by progressive saturation during the rainfall events. This mechanism could be compatible with the formation of capillary barriers at the interface between layers of different grain size distributions during infiltration. One-dimensional infiltration into the stratified soil was parametrically simulated considering rainfall events of increasing intensity and duration. The variations in the suction and degree of saturation over time allowed for the evaluation of stability variations in t...
Water, 2021
Rainfall-induced shallow landslides represent a serious threat in hilly and mountain areas around... more Rainfall-induced shallow landslides represent a serious threat in hilly and mountain areas around the world. The mountainous landscape of the Cinque Terre (eastern Liguria, Italy) is increasingly popular for both Italian and foreign tourists, most of which visit this outstanding terraced coastal landscape to enjoy a beach holiday and to practice hiking. However, this area is characterized by a high level of landslide hazard due to intense rainfalls that periodically affect its rugged and steep territory. One of the most severe events occurred on 25 October 2011, causing several fatalities and damage for millions of euros. To adequately address the issues related to shallow landslide risk, it is essential to develop landslide susceptibility models as reliable as possible. Regrettably, most of the current land-use and urban planning approaches only consider the susceptibility to landslide detachment, neglecting transit and runout processes. In this study, the adoption of a combined ap...
Remote Sensing, 2020
An increasing number of satellite platforms provide daily images of the Earth’s surface that can ... more An increasing number of satellite platforms provide daily images of the Earth’s surface that can be used in quantitative monitoring applications. However, their cost and the need for specific processing software make such products not often suitable for rapid mapping and deformation tracking. Google Earth images have been used in a number of mapping applications and, due to their free and rapid accessibility, they have contributed to partially overcome this issue. However, their potential in Earth’s surface displacement tracking has not yet been explored. In this paper, that aspect is analyzed providing a specific procedure and related MATLAB™ code to derive displacement field maps using digital image correlation of successive Google Earth images. The suitability of the procedure and the potential of such images are demonstrated here through their application to two relevant case histories, namely the Slumgullion landslide in Colorado and the Miage debris-covered glacier in Italy. R...
Water, 2020
The change of the Earth’s climate and the increasing human action (e.g., increasing impervious ar... more The change of the Earth’s climate and the increasing human action (e.g., increasing impervious areas) are influencing the recurrence and magnitude of flooding events and consequently the exposure of urban and rural communities. Under these conditions, flood hazard analysis needs to account for this change through the adoption of nonstationary approaches. Such methods, showing how flood hazard evolves over time, are able to support a long-term plan of adaptation in hazard changing perspective, reducing expected annual damage in flood prone areas. On this basis, in this paper a reevaluation of flood hazard in the Benevento province of southern Italy, is presented, providing a reduced complexity methodological framework for near future flood hazard prediction under nonstationary conditions. The proposed procedure uses multiple nonstationary probability models and a LiDAR-derived high-resolution inundation model to provide present and future flood scenarios in the form of hazard maps. S...
Sustainability, 2020
In this work, experiences from the use of bioengineering techniques as geo-hydrological risk miti... more In this work, experiences from the use of bioengineering techniques as geo-hydrological risk mitigation measures within the territory of Cinque Terre National Park (Eastern Liguria, Italy) after an extreme rainfall event that occurred on 25 October 2011 are described. This rainstorm was responsible for intense erosive processes and triggered numerous shallow landslides, causing severe structural and economic damage. After this disastrous event, many bioengineering interventions were planned to stabilize the most unstable slopes and the most problematic streams. Based on multidisciplinary studies and field surveys, an inventory of the executed bioengineering works was compiled. Subsequently, on the basis of expert judgement, both the efficiency and effectiveness of the works three years after their construction were examined. Furthermore, the compliance of the executed works with the design requirements was analysed. This study revealed that some of the investigated works lack post-i...
Remote Sensing, 2020
Climate change has increased the likelihood of the occurrence of disasters like wildfires, floods... more Climate change has increased the likelihood of the occurrence of disasters like wildfires, floods, storms, and landslides worldwide in the last years. Weather conditions change continuously and rapidly, and wildfires are occurring repeatedly and diffusing with higher intensity. The burnt catchments are known, in many parts of the world, as one of the main sensitive areas to debris flows characterized by different trigger mechanisms (runoff-initiated and debris slide-initiated debris flow). The large number of studies produced in recent decades has shown how the response of a watershed to precipitation can be extremely variable, depending on several on-site conditions, as well as the characteristics of precipitation duration and intensity. Moreover, the availability of satellite data has significantly improved the ability to identify the areas affected by wildfires, and, even more importantly, to carry out post-fire assessment of burnt areas. Many difficulties have to be faced in att...
Geological Society, London, Engineering Geology Special Publications, 2010
Data Revues 12962074 00050002 04000354, May 19, 2008
Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Landslides, June 28 -July 2, 2004 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2004
ABSTRACT Landslides detection and mapping are fundamental requirements for every hazard and risk ... more ABSTRACT Landslides detection and mapping are fundamental requirements for every hazard and risk evaluation. Due to their inevitable shortcomings, geomorphological field surveys and airphoto interpretation do not document all the gravitational events. Indeed some unstable slopes are inaccessible to field surveyors, while some landslides are too slow to be detected with the naked eye or interpretation of aerial photographs. In this work, we integrate geomorphological surveys with ground motion data derived by employing COSMO-SkyMed satellite imagery and the Intermittent Small BAseline Subset (ISBAS; Sowter et al., 2013), a new Advanced Differential Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (ADInSAR) technique which has been developed recently at the Nottingham University in the UK. The main advantage of ISBAS with respect to other InSAR and SBAS techniques, is the possibility to detect good radar reflectors even in non-urbanized terrain, where ground targets usually look intermittently coherent, meaning they have high coherence only in some interferograms but not in others. ISBAS has proven capable of increasing results over natural, woodland and agricultural terrains and, as a result, it makes it possible to improve the detection of landslide boundaries and the assessment of the state of activity where other InSAR approaches fail. We used COSMO-SkyMed StripMap data covering the period between November 2008 and October 2011, with 3m ground range resolution, 40° look angle and minimum revisiting time of 8 days. The data consist of 38 ascending images (track 133, frame 380) with ground track angle at scene centre of 169.5° from the north-south direction. These have been obtained thanks to an agreement between the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea and the University of Naples “Federico II”. We tested ISBAS in north-western Sicily (southern Italy), over a 1,530 km2 area where 1,473 landslides have been identified based on optical imagery and field surveys by the local Hydro-geomorphological Setting Plan published in 2006. The geological and tectonic setting of the area, related to the Apenninic-Maghrebian Chain orogeny, makes most of the instability phenomena of complex or flow type with an extremely slow to very slow velocity, namely very suitable for an interferometric analysis. We show the results for Piana degli Albanesi, a thrust faults-bounded basin located in the northern Mt. Kumeta massif, filled in with Lower Miocene marls and pelitic deposits. Here landslide risk affects housing and public infrastructure (e.g. the SP34, the SP38 and SP102 highways), and the unstable slopes extend up to a gravity masonry dam, such as to require continuous rebuilding of infrastructures in the portions with the higher displacement rates. The ISBAS results for ascending geometry entail an unprecedented 685,518 points in a 90 km2 extended processing area, and their Line Of Sight velocities range between -6.4 mm/yr (away from the sensor) and +6.6mm/yr (towards the sensor). ISBAS results detect a total of 89 mapped landslides, of which 23 are previously not recorded. The analysis of ISBAS COSMO-SKyMed time-series allows us to compare the deformation trends to rainfall events, and to evaluate the correlation between heavy or prolonged rainfall and accelerations in the ground motion histories of the identified landslides.
Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, 2001
Recently, slope disaster has occurred in regions around urban area and along highways in Malay Pe... more Recently, slope disaster has occurred in regions around urban area and along highways in Malay Peninsula. The disaster is a major factor that disturbs the sustainable development in the country. It is important to understand high potential regions of landslide and to predict slope disaster based on geotechnical and geological engineering for a sustainable development. Historical data of slope disaster helps us to understand the regional characteristics of landslide and the mechanism. The purpose of this study is to develop a historical landslide database in Malay Peninsula. The database can be available on GIS. The developed historical landslide database has been used with related information to landslide on GIS for investigation of characteristics of landslide in Malay Peninsula. In order to evaluate the hazard of slope failure in the whole Malay Peninsula, the spatial relationships between locations of historical landslides and the related information with slope failure have been investigated. Finally, the locations of historical landslide events are plotted on the proposed hazard map for confirming the applicability.
Landslide Science and Practice, 2013
A first inventory of landslides responsible for river damming in Campania region (Italy) is here ... more A first inventory of landslides responsible for river damming in Campania region (Italy) is here presented. Based upon archival research, cartography analysis, air-photo interpretation and field survey, thirty-six landslide dams have been recognized, along with four dams related to mixed fans. The inventoried cases have been classified according to the existing schemes; however, considering the peculiar features of the case studies, some new dam types have been introduced. Finally, a basic statistical analysis has been carried out, which revealed a good correlation among some environmental and geomorphometric variables.
Remote Sensing of Environment, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper presents the application of Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) inter... more ABSTRACT This paper presents the application of Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry (DInSAR) algorithms for the precise monitoring of earth dams ground deformation. The test site selected for this study is the Conza Dam, located in the southern Apennines (Italy), very close to the epicenter of the big earthquake (Mw = 6.9) which took place on November 23th, 1980, striking the Irpinia region. Among the multiple advanced DInSAR techniques developed by the SAR community during the last decade, this work uses the so-called SUBSOFT software, developed by the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSLab) group from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), which is based on the use of Coherent Pixels Technique (CPT) algorithm. The analysis is carried out using 51 ENVIronmental SATellite-Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ENVISAT-ASAR) images, corresponding to the period from 29th of November 2002 to the 30th of July 2010. In this framework, ground displacements recorded by a network of conventional ground-based sensors are also available for the same temporal span. Indeed, the embankment dam is well instrumented to measure internal settlements by means of cross-arms placed in six different cross-sections, and superficial displacements by means of targets for precise leveling. A statistical analysis has been performed to carry out a better comparison between the measurements obtained with the conventional field sensors and the interferometric data. The high agreement between final DInSAR displacements and in-situ instrumental data, demonstrates the reliability of such technique for the precise monitoring of civil infrastructures, and concretely, in dams with a high exposure factor and its consequent risk.
Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, 2004
Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2003
Past slope instabilities at Quindici (one of the five towns of Campania that was hit by catastrop... more Past slope instabilities at Quindici (one of the five towns of Campania that was hit by catastrophic landslides on 5 May 1998) and in the Lauro Valley are investigated to improve the understanding of the landslide history in the area, as a mandatory step for the evaluation of the landslide hazard. The research was performed by combining information on past slope instabilities from both historical and geological data. From numerous historical sources an archive consisting of 45 landsliding and flooding events for the period 1632-1998 was compiled. Landslide activity was also investigated by means of interpretation of multi-year sets of aerial photos, production of Landslide Activity Maps, and excavation of trenches on the alluvial fans at the mountain foothills. Detailed stratigraphic analysis of the sections exposed in the trenches identified landslide events as the main geomorphic process responsible for building up the fans in the study area. Integration of historical and geological approaches provides significant insight into past and recent instability at Quindici. This is particularly valuable in view of the limitations of individual sources of information. Application of such an approach offers potential for improved hazard assessment and risk mitigation.
Journal of Cultural Heritage, 2005
As many other Italian towns, the historical center of Sassari was built using materials of prevai... more As many other Italian towns, the historical center of Sassari was built using materials of prevailing local provenance. This is the reason why, following the program research of the Progetto Finalizzato “Beni Culturali”, the survey of materials constituting the buildings of the ancient city center ...
International Journal of Remote Sensing, 2011
Landslides are recognized as one of the most damaging natural hazards in Italy. Campania region r... more Landslides are recognized as one of the most damaging natural hazards in Italy. Campania region represents a complex geological setting, where mass movements of different types are widespread, and urban expansion can be increasingly seen by the presence of buildings and infrastructure in landslide-prone areas. In such a context, monitoring of unstable slopes represents a key activity in the process
Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 2010
The marbles exploited between Vitulano and Cautano (Benevento province, Campania region, Italy), ... more The marbles exploited between Vitulano and Cautano (Benevento province, Campania region, Italy), have been widely utilized (at least from the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century) in several important monumental buildings of the region, due to their good properties and peculiar aesthetic qualities. They are limestones deriving from the filling of palaeo-cavities, carved into an emerged Cretaceous calcareous platform, by calcareous breccias, bauxite and alabastrine deposits. Such cavities are the result of both jointing and karst processes. The studied outcrops of the Vitulano Marbles are affected by a complex joint pattern in terms of attitude and spacing, which results in rock blocks highly variable in volume. Regarding the mineralogical composition, calcite is definitely predominant whereas the insoluble residue is constituted by low amounts of dolomite, bohemite, ematite and kaolinite. The petrophysical characterization put in evidence fairly good geomechanical properties, o...
Weathered igneous and metamorphic rocks widely crop out in the Mediterranean area, where in recen... more Weathered igneous and metamorphic rocks widely crop out in the Mediterranean area, where in recent years greater attention has been paid to weathering-related slope movements. Calabria, the southernmost region of the Italian peninsula, is one of the most challenging area where to study such topic. Many factors favoured during past times onset and development of the weathering processes in Calabria: