Description and objectives

The identification and geomorphological characterization of catchments and slopes located along transport corridors is crucial for quantifying their potential interaction with geo-hydrological phenomena such as flash floods and landslides.

The project proposes the development and implementation of specific portable, automatic, and reproducible software modules for:

Multi-scale delineation of catchments and slopes;

Calculation of concentration time using an ensemble of empirical methods at each scale level;

Assessment of slope stability for the identified slopes using statistical, conceptual, and physically based methods.

For (1), multi-scalarity is achieved through a method for delineating catchments and nested slope units at different scale levels, locally optimized with an adaptive algorithm. In (2), various well-known equations from the literature are used to determine concentration times depending on drainage network density, topography, and land cover. In (3), models fitted at the national scale are specialized for individual slopes, and high-resolution physical models are applied to collapse and debris flow phenomena.

These three aspects represent core expertise of the research group. The proposed objectives involve variations of algorithms, software, and models that have been extensively developed and tested at the national level, using digital terrain models with a resolution of 10 meters or higher.