Quantitative rockfall risk assessment with and without protective measures

Dr Maddalena Marchelli

Quantitative rockfall risk assessment is a challenging yet essential step in risk management, crucial for implementing effective mitigation strategies and allocating available economic resources. Key aspects include understanding the temporal and spatial probabilities of occurrence, the size of the rockfall blocks, their potential trajectories and energies, and the fragmentation processes. Similarly, quantifying damages requires knowledge of the vulnerability and value of the elements at risk under different scenarios.

To mitigate risk, protective measures such as rockfall barriers or embankments are often installed. Understanding the failure probability of these structures, both at the time of installation and throughout their service life, is fundamental for quantifying residual risk and developing effective inspection plans, remediation interventions, or replacements.

This talk presents a comprehensive framework for computing risk with and without protective measures, along with strategies to address potential data gaps. A method tailored to compute the risk on mountain infrastructure is proposed. Finally, innovative design and maintenance procedures for mitigation works are presented.

Dr Maddalena Marchelli Marie Curie Research Fellow, Politecnico di Torino (Italy)

Dr Maddalena Marchelli is a Marie Curie Research Associate at Politecnico di Torino (Italy), previously fixed-term Assistant Professor in the same university. After her Master’s degree in building engineering, she obtained the PhD in environmental engineering from Politecnico di Torino. Her research relates to natural hazards and risk mitigation, with a focus on rockfall engineering. In 2023 she was awarded grant funding through the highly competitive European Marie Skłodowska-Curie call with a project related to fragmentation processes in rockfall and risk analysis in mountain and mining contexts. She is currently visiting the Centre for Geotechnical Science and Engineering at the University of Newcastle to carry out her research activities. She is author of more than 50 journal and conference papers and reviewer for leading international journals on rock mechanics and slope stability. As an active member of the Rockfall Protection Engineering Research Center, she is participating to several committees promoting the technology transfer of rockfall studies to industry and Public Authorities.

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