Future project development are manifold and can be grouped into 3 main categories, namely:

For upgrade and maintenance we plan to:

  • complete the second upgrade for the period 1995-1996. The inventory will be carried out by searching several local and national newspapers and by searching for historical data in the 1800 GNDCI publications and reports;
  • continue to validate the database and its information content. Emphasis will be given to tables not yet validated and to the relationships between the different tables;
  • validate the catalogue of the 15,000 sites affected by mass-movements and inundation, and in particular its relationship with the main database;
  • input into the database the text of the more than 30,000 newspaper articles stored into the AVI archive.
To improve the distribution of the historical information to a variety of users, including scientists, planners, decision makers, the media and the general public, we plan to add new capabilities to the GNDCI information system. In particular we will focus on the development of semiautomatic procedures capable to generate regional reports aimed at civil protection authorities.

The possibility of using the historical information collected by the AVI project for technical and scientific purposes is probably the most interesting, intriguing, and challenging aspect of the entire AVI project. Experiments carried out in the Tiber River basin in Central Italy have demonstrated the feasibility of determining regional hydrological thresholds for the occurrence of catastrophic events (i.e., events that trigger landslides and inundation). Starting from these preliminary results we will attempt to define and classify, for the entire nation, past meteorological events that triggered landslides and inundation. The extent, the number of landslides and inundated sites, the general climatological setting, the hydro-meteorological conditions of each meteorological event will be determined and studied.

Beside this, efforts will be made to use the historical information to determine the social end economic cost of geological and hydrological disaster in Italy. Emphasis will be given to the impact of landslides and floods on human beings and on the transportation networks.


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