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.

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