Session

All throughout Europe, landslides represent geomorphic hazards that have the potential to inflict severe damages to human society and natural environment. The very complex European orographic systems are extremely prone to a wide range of fast or slow-moving landslides, conditioned by its litho-structural traits and physiographic characteristics or by the results of a long-lasting human inhabitation, leaving its fingerprint on the environment. The Pyrenean, Alpine, Apennine, Carpathian of Balkan's mountainous chains, including their intra-mountainous depressions or outer hilly and tableland units, are subjected to a large spectrum of landslides whose morphodynamic patterns are reflecting, besides the complex conditioning framework, the triggering factors mainly in form of precipitation, snowmelt or earthquakes. Representing a dominant source of sediments throughout mountain chains, the landslides may pose a direct geomorphic control not only on fluvial processes, but sometimes may govern almost entirely the mechanisms and rhythms of present-day geomorphic evolution.

Throughout the last 25 years, large regions of Europe have experienced major social and economic changes, among which the fall of the communism, the shift towards a free market economy and the extension of EU towards East. Especially the latter meant also important changes in the land cover and use as well as demographic challenges, imprinting new patterns in assessing exposure and vulnerability. In the mean time, the fastly-increasing technologies (including more accurate and less expensive Earth Observation products) and more elaborated methodologies are giving better insights in the landslide morphodynamics. In the mean time, as already stated by the Hyogo Framework for Action and enhanced within Horizon 2020, there is an increased need for a proper landslide risk management framework in which the interaction results between the numerous stakeholders (from both private and public sectors) involved in risk estimation, assessment, management or governance should be transformed from technological achievements into viable commercial products.

The aim of this session is to outline the role of geographers within local, regional or national methodological approaches suitable for improving existing (or under development) landslide risk reduction strategies. Also, the session’s purpose is to emphasize how the geographers may contribute in the optimization of landslide risk management organizational framework, assuming the stakeholders' proper levels of implication in hazard identification, risk analysis, risks prioritization and, as a consequence, the adaptation of authorities' attitude towards pro-active approaches.