Early Warning Systems & Forecasting

One of the most used approaches for landslides forecasting is the definition of rainfall thresholds, which can be defined by several parameters; in particular intensity (I) and duration (D) of rainfall are among the most used (Caine, 1980). Rainfall thresholds are widely used in early warning systems (Aleotti, 2004; Martelloni et al., 2011): basically real-time measurements and rainfall forecasts are compared with the thresholds and if the latter are overcome, a warning is raised. Thus, for rainfall-induced landslides, early warning systems exploit the empirical observation that a minimum amount of precipitation is necessary to trigger landslides (Reichenbach et al., 1998, Guzzetti et al., 2007, Alfieri et al., 2012). Regional to national warning systems based on empirical rainfall thresholds and systematic rainfall measurements or forecasts, are – or have been – operational regionally (e.g. Rosi et al., 2012). 

About national warning systems an interesting work is based on the application of the SLIP Model (e.g. Montrasio et al., 2016, Valentino et al., 2011).