Probabilistic rainfall thresholds for triggering debris flows in a human-modified landscape

Abstract In the Carrara Marble Basin (CMB; Apuan Alps, Italy) quarrying has accumulated widespread and thick quarry waste, lying on steep slopes and invading valley bottoms. The Apuan Alps are one of the rainiest areas in Italy and rainstorms often cause landslides and debris flows. The stability conditions of quarry waste are difficult to assess, owing to its textural, geotechnical and hydrogeological variability. Therefore, empirical rainfall thresholds may be effective in forecasting the possible occurrence of debris flows in the CMB. Three types of thresholds were defined for three rain gauges of the \CMB\ and for the whole area: rainfall intensity–rainfall duration (ID), cumulated event rainfall–rainfall duration (ED), and cumulated event rainfall normalized by the mean annual precipitation–rainfall intensity (EMAPI). The rainfall events recorded from 1950 to 2005 was analyzed and compared with the occurrence of debris flows involving the quarry waste. They were classified in events that triggered one or more debris flows and events that did not trigger debris flows. This dataset was fitted using the logistic regression method that allows us to define a set of thresholds, corresponding to different probabilities of failure (from 10% to 90%) and therefore to different warning levels. The performance of the logistic regression in defining probabilistic thresholds was evaluated by means of contingency tables, skill scores and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. These analyses indicate that the predictive capability of the three types of threshold is acceptable for each rain gauge and for the whole CMB. The best compromise between the number of correct debris flow predictions and the number of wrong predictions is obtained for the 40% probability thresholds. The results obtained can be tested in an experimental debris flows forecasting system based on rainfall thresholds, and could have implications for the debris flow hazard and risk assessment in the CMB

First-order correction to counter the effect of eccentricity on the hole-drilling integral method with strain-gage rosettes:

The offset between the hole and the centre of the strain-gage rosette is unavoidable, although usually small, in the hole-drilling technique for residual stress evaluation. In this article, we revi..

Last century rainfall variations in northern Tuscany (Italy)

Climate change is one of the main factors affecting groundwater resources, making an assessment necessary for the future exploitation. Recent past climate changes evaluation requires an extensive and distributed meteorological database. Some of the principal groundwater systems in Tuscany (particularly the karst aquifer systems of the Apuan Alps) are present in its northern part. Also, Tuscany has a densely distributed rain gauges network (some datasets longer than 100 years). Bartolini et al. (2014) and D’Oria et al. (2017) already identified precipitation reduction and temperature increase in the whole of Tuscany and its northern portion for the last century. In this work, we investigate the time evolution of rainfall in northern Tuscany in the last century both for quantity and dynamics. The number of rain gauges chosen for this analysis was heavily increased and deeply controlled for datasets continuity and homogeneity. We studied the precipitation data in terms of mean annual precipitation differences between the periods 1990/2019 – 1921/1950 and 1990/2019 – 1951/1980; detection of trends in the yearly and seasonal precipitation via the Mann-Kendall test; rainfall events variations; spatial distribution of the precipitation trend; changing in single precipitation events extension through the last seventy years. The precipitation reduction, identified in the previous studies, is confirmed and seasonally featured. We highlight variations in the rainfall events for different rain-depth intervals. We estimate the last century annual precipitation decrease to be around 10% of the Mean Annual Precipitation in the past thirty years. However, this variation seems not evenly distributed in the analysed area. The observed evolution in local hydrological regime represents a serious threat to the strategic karst groundwater of the area, which is sensitive to hydro-climate conditions (Doveri et al., 2019). The precipitation decrease and the change in distribution are already modifying the flow rate and regime in some major karst springs

VIBRATION SIGNATURE ANALYSIS OF REAL AND VIRTUAL DAMAGED GEARS

ABSTRACT A high performance rig designed to test gears (materials and geometries) in extreme load and speed conditions as in aerospace applications was used to test diagnostic systems by the only vibration analysis. The authors of the present report have implemented, in addition to some standard signal analysis techniques, some advanced methodologies (e.g. NA4, NB4), which are applied to the synchronously averaged signal to detect the smallest fault related variations in the tested gear vibration signature. The different techniques have been tested and compared on the signals of a gear that underwent failure, showing the good performance of the latter approaches compared to the more conventional ones. A numerical simulation of the gear meshing was carried out to support the experimental campaign and the benchmarking of the diagnostic tools,. The stiffness computed by a FEM code was employed to simulate the gear system dynamic behavior with a lumped model, which was finally tuned using the experimental signals, to obtain indications on the crack evolution

Effetti sulla ripartizione dei carichi dovute alla configurazione dei satelliti in rotismi planetari

La conoscenza della ripartizione dei carichi sulle dentature è di cruciale importanza per la progettazione di rotismi planetari, in quanto permette di evitare che la trasmissione operi in condizioni non conformi alle specifiche, in cui possano avvenire rotture catastrofiche. La ripartizione del carico dipende sia dai parametri funzionali del rotismo (quali gioco dei cuscinetti, backlash, rigidezze dei componenti) sia dal numero di satelliti impiegati. Il presente lavoro mira ad investigare come il numero di satelliti possa influenzare la ripartizione dei carichi applicati a una trasmissione tipicamente impiegata in campo eolico e come questi effetti vengano amplificati oppure attenuati dalla variazione di parametri funzionali (quali il gioco dei cuscinetti, le rigidezze dei supporti e dell’ingranamento, ed il backlash) e dagli errori di montaggio. Lo studio è stato condotto impiegando un modello a parametri concentrati interamente parametrico che permette di identificare condizioni di malfunzionamento quali perdita di contatto e/o incuneamento oltre al carico agente su ciascun ingranamento in funzione dell’insieme dei suddetti parametri. Mappe di ripartizione del carico vengono proposte per rotismi aventi da tre a cinque satelliti.The knowledge of the distribution of loads on the teeth is of crucial importance for the design of planetary gearboxes, since it allows to avoid that the transmission operates in conditions that do not comply with the specifications, in which a catastrophic failure can take place. The load distribution depends both on the functional parameters of the gearing (such as bearing play, backlash, stiffness component) and on the number of planets. This paper aims to investigate how the number of planets will affect the distribution of loads applied to a transmission typically used in wind farms and how these effects are amplified or attenuated by the variation of operating parameters (such as bearing clearance, supports and tooth stiffness, and backlash) and the assembly errors. The study was conducted employing a lumped parameter model parametric spaces that allows to identify fault conditions such as loss of contact and/or wedging in addition to the load acting on each meshing on the basis of all of those parameters. Maps load distribution are proposed for gears having from three to five planets

Estimation of the susceptibility of a road network to shallow landslides with the integration of the sediment connectivity

Abstract. Landslides cause severe damage to the road network of the hit zone, in terms of both direct (partial or complete destruction of a road or blockages) and indirect (traffic restriction or the cut-off of a certain area) costs. Thus, the identification of the parts of the road network that are more susceptible to landslides is fundamental to reduce the risk to the population potentially exposed and the financial expense caused by the damage. For these reasons, this paper aimed to develop and test a data-driven model for the identification of road sectors that are susceptible to being hit by shallow landslides triggered in slopes upstream from the infrastructure. This model was based on the Generalized Additive Method, where the function relating predictors and response variable is an empirically fitted smooth function that allows fitting the data in the more likely functional form, considering also non-linear relations. This work also analyzed the importance, on the estimation of the susceptibility, of considering or not the sediment connectivity, which influences the path and the travel distance of the materials mobilized by a slope failure until hitting a potential barrier such as a road. The study was carried out in a catchment of northeastern Oltrepò Pavese (northern Italy), where several shallow landslides affected roads in the last 8 years. The most significant explanatory variables were selected by a random partition of the available dataset in two parts (training and test subsets), 100 times according to a bootstrap procedure. These variables (selected 80 times by the bootstrap procedure) were used to build the final susceptibility model, the accuracy of which was estimated through a 100-fold repetition of the holdout method for regression, based on the training and test sets created through the 100 bootstrap model selection. The presented methodology allows the identification, in a robust and reliable way, of the most susceptible road sectors that could be hit by sediments delivered by landslides. The best predictive capability was obtained using a model in which the index of connectivity was also calculated according to a linear relationship, was considered. Most susceptible road traits resulted to be located below steep slopes with a limited height (lower than 50 m), where sediment connectivity is high. Different land use scenarios were considered in order to estimate possible changes in road susceptibility. Land use classes of the study area were characterized by similar connectivity features. As a consequence, variations on the susceptibility of the road network according to different scenarios of distribution of land cover were limited. The results of this research demonstrate the ability of the developed methodology in the assessment of susceptible roads. This could give the managers of infrastructure information about the criticality of the different road traits, thereby allowing attention and economic budgets to be shifted towards the most critical assets, where structural and non-structural mitigation measures could be implemented

shallow landslides susceptibility assessment in different environments

The spatial distribution of shallow landslides is strongly influenced by different climatic conditions and environmental settings. This makes difficult the implementation of an exhaustive monitoring technique for correctly assessing the landslide susceptibility in different environmental contexts. In this work, a unique methodological strategy, based on the statistical implementation of the generalized additive model (GAM), was performed. This method was used to investigate the shallow landslide predisposition of four sites with different geological, geomorphological and land-use characteristics: the Rio Frate and the Versa catchments (Southern Lombardy) and the Vernazza and the Pogliaschina catchments (Eastern Liguria). A good predictive overall accuracy was evaluated computing by the area under the ROC curve (AUROC), with values ranging from 0.76 to 0.82 and estimating the mean accuracy of the model (0.70–0.75). The method showed a high flexibility, which led to a good identification of the most significant predisposing factors for shallow landslide occurrence in the different investigated areas. In particular, detailed susceptibility maps were obtained, allowing to identify the shallow landslide prone areas. This methodology combined with the use of the rainfall thresholds for triggering shallow landslides may provide an innovative tool useful for the improvement of spatial planning and early warning systems

Cold atoms in space: community workshop summary and proposed road-map

We summarise the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible road-map for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space and research funding agencies

Cold atoms in space: community workshop summary and proposed road-map

We summarise the discussions at a virtual Community Workshop on Cold Atoms in Space concerning the status of cold atom technologies, the prospective scientific and societal opportunities offered by their deployment in space, and the developments needed before cold atoms could be operated in space. The cold atom technologies discussed include atomic clocks, quantum gravimeters and accelerometers, and atom interferometers. Prospective applications include metrology, geodesy and measurement of terrestrial mass change due to, e.g., climate change, and fundamental science experiments such as tests of the equivalence principle, searches for dark matter, measurements of gravitational waves and tests of quantum mechanics. We review the current status of cold atom technologies and outline the requirements for their space qualification, including the development paths and the corresponding technical milestones, and identifying possible pathfinder missions to pave the way for missions to exploit the full potential of cold atoms in space. Finally, we present a first draft of a possible road-map for achieving these goals, that we propose for discussion by the interested cold atom, Earth Observation, fundamental physics and other prospective scientific user communities, together with the European Space Agency (ESA) and national space and research funding agencies.publishedVersio