In this work, an innovative methodology to generate the automatic ground motion areas mapping is presented. The procedure was tested using different sensors such as ERS-1/2, ENVISAT, COSMO-SkyMed and Sentinel-1 over an area of about 500 km² in the Venetian-Friulian coastal Plain (NE Italy). The resulting mapping allows to detect priority areas where to address further in situ investigations such as to verify the presence of localized buried landforms.

This paper aimed to develop and test a data-driven model for the identification of road sectors that are susceptible to be hit by shallow landslides triggered in slopes upstream of infrastructure. Most susceptible road traits were those located below steep slopes with a limited height (lower than 50 m), where sediment connectivity is high. The results of the susceptibility analysis can give asset managers indispensable information on the relative criticality of the different roads.

We present a multiscale and multi-sensor methodology for flood mapping using free or low-cost data. We first mapped flooded areas at basin scale using free satellite data using both SAR and multispectral sensors. At local scale we refine mapping using very high-resolution images from Remotely Piloted Aerial System and terrestrial car camera, then we used these data to create 3-D model with structure from motion (SfM). All these data allowed creating accurate flooded area and water depth maps.

Snow water equivalent is an important parameter for hydrological and climate change studies, however its measurement is tedious and time consuming. In this paper we show that it is possible to accurately measure snow water equivalent using electromagnetic methods. During a field campaign we tested the performances of traditional methods vs. those of a Ground Penetrating Radar, founding a very good agreement between the snow water equivalent values computed with the two different methods.

Human-induced changes in semi-arid regions could be responsible for modifications in ephemeral streams. Our results confirm that in-channel gravel mining and aquifer overexploitation over the last 50 years in the study area have changed the natural stability of the Nogalte stream and its geomorphic parameters. A comparison between flood events of the past and a recent one recorded in 2012 reveals changes and a new flooding pattern with a transition from an alluvial to a confined fluvial pattern.

We use InSAR time series to infer the temporal evolution of the piezometric level in 19 wells of the Tertiary detritic aquifer of Madrid (TDAM) in the period 1997-2010. Our results suggest that an average elastic storage coefficient Ske of all wells can be used to estimate piezometric level variations in all the points where ground deformation has been measured by InSAR, thus allowing production of piezometric level maps for the different extraction/recovery cycles in the TDAM.

A methodology based on Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) is proposed in order to disentangle the contribution of different processes that act at different spatio-temporal scales in land subsidence (i.e. vadose zone processes as swelling/shrinkage of clay soils, soil consolidation and fluid extraction). The methodology was applied in different Italian geological contexts characterized by natural and anthropic processes (i.e. a Prealpine valley and the Po Plain in northern Italy).

The implementation of FEM models permits to effectively analyse the cause-effect mechanism of a phenomenon.In the present work, in spite of the limited geotechnical and hydrogeological data available, the model has allowed to qualitatively and “quantitatively” reproduce the subsidence that affects Murcia city. The achieved results have been compared with the displacements estimated through A-DInSAR techniques and measured by the extensometers.This allows a better management of the exploitations.

This manuscript defines a reliable methodology for shallow landslides triggering zones assessment at site-specific or local scales by using a well-established physically based model (TRIGRS-unsaturated) based on the calibration of the model at slope scale using soil hydrological behavior analyzed through a continuous field monitoring. Moreover, the paper analyzes the effects on triggering zones assessment of taking into account for different unit mapping of the slope soils of a studied area.