Comparison between different approaches to modeling shallow landslide susceptibility: a case history in Oltrepo Pavese, Northern Italy

Abstract

On the 27 and 28 April 2009, the area of Oltrepo Pavese in northern Italy was affected by a very intense rainfall event that caused a great number of shallow landslides. These instabilities occurred on slopes covered by vineyards or recently formed woodlands and caused damage to many roads and one human loss. Based on aerial photographs taken immediately after the event and field surveys, more than 1600 landslides were detected. After acquiring topographical data, geotechnical properties of the soils and land use, susceptibility analysis on a territorial scale was carried out. In particular, different physically based models were applied to two contiguous sites with the same geological context but different typologies and sizes of shallow landslides. This paper presents the comparison between the ex-post results obtained from the different approaches. On the basis of the observed landslide localizations, the accuracy of the different models was evaluated, and the significant results are highlighted.