A data-drive model for the assessment of shallow landslides hazard with the integration of satellite soil moisture and rainfall data

R ainfall-induced shallow landslides are very dangerous phenomena, widespread all over the world, which could provoke significant damages to buildings, roads, facilities, cultivations and, sometimes, loss of human lives. For these reasons, it is necessary assessing the most prone zones in a territory which is particularly susceptible to these phenomena and the frequency of the triggering events, according to the return time of them, which generally correspond to intense and concentrated rainfalls. The most adopted methodologies for the determination of the susceptibility and hazard of a territory are physically-based models, that quantify the hydrological and the mechanical responses of the slopes according to particular rainfall scenarios. Whereas, these methodologies could be applied in a reliable way in little catchments, where geotechnical and hydrological features of the materials affected by shallow failures are homogeneous. Datadriven models could constraints these, even if they are generally built up taking into only the predisposing factors of shallow instabilities, allowing to estimate only the susceptibility of a territory, without considering the frequency of the triggering events. It is then required to consider also triggering factors of shallow landslides to allow these methods to estimate also the probability of occurrence and, then, the hazard. This work presents the development and the implementation of data-driven model able to assses the spatio-temporal probability of occurrence of shallow landslides in large areas by means of a data-driven technique. The model is based on Multivariate Adaptive Regression Technique (MARS), that links geomorphological, hydrological, geological and land use predisposing factors to triggering factors of shallow failures. These triggering factors correspond to soil saturation degree and rainfall amounts, which are available for entire a study area thanks to satellite measures. The methodological approach is testing in 30-40 km2 wide catchments of Oltrepò Pavese hilly area (northern Italy), where detailed inventories of shallow landslides occurred during past triggering events and corresponding satellite soil moisture and rainfall maps are available. This work was made in the frame of the ANDROMEDA project, funded by Fondazione Cariplo

Empirical and Physically Based Thresholds for the Occurrence of Shallow Landslides in a Prone Area of Northern Italian Apennines

Rainfall thresholds define the conditions leading to the triggering of shallow landslides over wide areas. They can be empirical, which exploit past rainfall data and landslide inventories, or physicallybased, which integrate slope physical–hydrological modeling and stability analyses. In this work, a comparison between these two types of thresholds was performed, using data acquired in Oltrepò Pavese (Northern Italian Apennines), to evaluate their reliability. Empirical thresholds were reconstructed based on rainfalls and landslides triggering events collected from 2000 to 2018. The same rainfall events were implemented in a physicallybased model of a representative testsite, considering dierent antecedent pore-water pressures, chosen according to the analysis of hydrological monitoring data. Thresholds validation was performed, using an external dataset (August 1992–August 1997). Soil hydrological conditions have a primary role on predisposing or preventing slope failures. In Oltrepò Pavese area, cold and wet months are the most susceptible periods, due to the permanence of saturated or close-to-saturation soil conditions. The lower the pore-water pressure is at the beginning of an event, the higher the amount of rain required to trigger shallow failures is. physicallybased thresholds provide a better reliability in discriminating the events which could or could not trigger slope failures than empirical thresholds. The latter provide a significant number of false positives, due to neglecting the antecedent soil hydrological conditions. These results represent a fundamental basis for the choice of the best thresholds to be implemented in a reliable earlywarning system

The neural network associated with lexical-semantic knowledge about social groups.

A person can be appraised as an individual or as a member of a social group. In the present study we tested whether the knowledge about social groups is represented independently of the living and non-living things. Patients with frontal and temporal lobe tumors involving either the left or the right hemisphere performed three tasks - picture naming, word-to-picture matching and picture sorting - tapping the lexical semantic knowledge of living things, non-living things and social groups. Both behavioral and voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping (VLSM) analyses suggested that social groups might be represented differently from other categories. VLSM analysis carried out on naming errors revealed that left-lateralized lesions in the inferior frontal gyrus, amygdala, insula and basal ganglia were associated with the lexical-semantic processing of social groups. These findings indicate that the social group representation may rely on areas associated with affective processing