Time response of a landslide to meteorological events

International audienceA landslide affecting two small villages located on the Northwestern Italian Apennines has been investigated since the year 2000 through the use of different equipment. A complex monitoring system has been installed in the area. The system includes several inclinometers, piezometers and a raingauge. An Automatic Inclinometric System (AIS) has been also installed that automatically performs measurements, twice a day, along the entire length of a pipe that is 45 m deep. This monitoring system has been set up to identify a methodology that allowed to deal with landslides, trying to predict their behaviour beforehand for warning purposes. Previous researches carried out in the same area for a period of about 7 months, in the year 2000, have allowed to identify a correlation between deep slope movements and rainfalls. In particular, it has been possible to determine the time lag needed for a rainfall peak to produce a corresponding peak of the landslide movements; this time lag was of 9 days. This result was possible because the AIS allows to obtain, as mentioned, daily inclinometric measurements that can be correlated with the recorded rainfalls. In the present report we have extended the analysis of the correlation between deep slope movements and rainfalls to a greater period of observation (2 years) to verify over this period the consistency of the time lag mentioned above. The time lag previously found has been confirmed. We have also examined the possibility to extend to the entire landslide body the correlation that has been found locally, analyzing the results of the remaining inclinometric tubes with traditional reading installed on the landslide and comparing them with the results of the AIS. The output of the tubes equipped with piezometric cells has also been analyzed. The relations existing among rainfalls, ground water level oscillations and the related slope movements have been explore

Preface Results of the open session on "Documentation and monitoring of landslides and debris flows" for mathematical modelling and design of mitigation measures, held at the EGU General Assembly 2009

The papers that are here presented and summarised represent the recent scientific contributions of some authors coming from different countries and working in the fields of monitoring, modelling, mapping and design of mitigation measures against mass movements. The authors had the opportunity to present their recent advancements, discuss each other needs and set forth future research requirements during the 2009 EGU General Assembly, so that their scientific contributions can be considered the result of the debates and exchanges that were set among scientists and researchers, either personally or during the review phase since that date. In this resume, the scientific papers of the special issue are divided according to different thematic areas and summarised. The most innovative scientific approaches proposed in the special issue, regarding the monitoring methodologies, simulation techniques and laboratory equipment are described and summarised. The obtained results are very promising to keep on future research at a very satisfactory level

Automatically Detecting Changes and Anomalies in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Images

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in civil aviation is growing up quickly, enabling new scenarios, especially in environmental monitoring and public surveillance services. So far, Earth observation has been carried out only through satellite images, which are limited in resolution and suffer from important barriers such as cloud occlusion. Microdrone solutions, providing video streaming capabilities, are already available on the marketplace, but they are limited to altitudes of a few hundred feet. In contrast, UAVs equipped with high quality cameras can fly at altitudes of a few thousand feet and can fill the gap between satellite observations and ground sensors. Therefore, new needs for data processing arise, spanning from computer vision algorithms to sensor and mission management. This paper presents a solution for automatically detecting changes in images acquired at different times by patrolling UAVs flying over the same targets (but not necessarily along the same path or at the same altitude). Change detection in multi-temporal images is a prerequisite for land cover inspection, which, in turn, sets up the basis for detecting potentially dangerous or threatening situations

Nuclear Shadowing in the Structure Function F3(x)F_3(x)

Nuclear modification of the structure function $F_3$ is investigated. Although it could be estimated in the medium and large $x$ regions from the nuclear structure function $F_2^A$, it is essentially unknown at small $x$. The nuclear structure function $F_3^A$ at small $x$ is investigated in two different theoretical models: a parton-recombination model with $Q^2$ rescaling and an aligned-jet model. We find that these models predict completely different behavior at small $x$: {\it antishadowing} in the first parton model and {\it shadowing} in the aligned-jet model. Therefore, studies of the ratio $F_3^A/F_3^D$ at small $x$ could be useful in discriminating among different models, which produce similar shadowing behavior in the structure function $F_2$. We also estimate currently acceptable nuclear modification of $F_3$ at small $x$ by using $F_2^A/F_2^D$ experimental data and baryon-number conservation.Comment: 10 pages, Latex, Figs.1 and 2 are not included, Complete postscript file including the figures is available at ftp://ftp.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/pub/paper/riko/quantum1/saga-he-78.ps.gz or at http://www.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/saga-u/riko/physics/quantum1/structure.htm

Computing Topology Preservation of RBF Transformations for Landmark-Based Image Registration

In image registration, a proper transformation should be topology preserving. Especially for landmark-based image registration, if the displacement of one landmark is larger enough than those of neighbourhood landmarks, topology violation will be occurred. This paper aim to analyse the topology preservation of some Radial Basis Functions (RBFs) which are used to model deformations in image registration. Mat\'{e}rn functions are quite common in the statistic literature (see, e.g. \cite{Matern86,Stein99}). In this paper, we use them to solve the landmark-based image registration problem. We present the topology preservation properties of RBFs in one landmark and four landmarks model respectively. Numerical results of three kinds of Mat\'{e}rn transformations are compared with results of Gaussian, Wendland's, and Wu's functions

A study of the double hadron neutrinoproduction on nuclei

The nuclear medium influence on the dihadron neutrinoproduction is investigated for the first time, using the data obtained with SKAT bubble chamber. An indication is obtained that the nuclear attenuation of the dihadron is more expressed for kinematically closest hadron pairs. The experimental data on the dihadron attenuation and on the ratio of the dihadron to single-hadron yields are compared with predictions of the two-scale string fragmentation model.Comment: 5 pages, 10 figure