Landslides and engineered slopes. Experience, theory and practice. Vol 1 / Оползни и искусственные склоны. Опыт, теория и практика. Том 1

Along with storms, floods, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, landslides are one of the most severe natural hazards. Even though they cause fewer victims than other hazards, landslides are responsible for huge economic damage around the world, with losses of hundreds of millions of Euros per year. In addition, differently from other hazards, even small magnitude events represent a serious threat, deeply affecting transportation corridors and disrupting movements of men and goods. Finally, landslides can cause strong geomorphological modifications inducing permanent changes in the landscape. In spite of the complexity of the phenomena that lead sloping grounds to failure and govern the subsequent movement of soil/rock downslope, over the last ten years the knowledge of landslide mechanisms  and of the mechanical processes that trigger and accompany any slope failure has remarkably increased.  One of the key reasons for such an increase is the strong synergy among researchers in the geoengineering  sciences. The JTC1, an ad hoc committee recently created by the Federation of the International Geoengineering Societies, and the International Symposia on Landslides (ISLs), four-year events resulting from from the collaboration of these societies, are important tools that are fostering the production and the exchange of ideas.
The first International Symposium on Landslides was held in the Seventies. The 12th event will take place in Naples. As it was the case with previous seates (Kyoto, New Delhi, Toronto, Lausanne, Christchurch, Trondheim, Cardiff, Rio de Janeiro, Xi’an, Banff), Naples and its region are the seat of important schools on landslides and the whole area is strongly affected not only by diffuse slope movements but also by a number of different natural hazards (volcanic, seismic, hydraulic). The interaction and the relationships between landslides and the other natural hazards is the pivotal subject of the 12th ISL.  <...>