Evaluation of landslide invasion hazard through cellular automata at Gragnano (Sorrento Peninsula)

The ultimate aim of many landslide studies is the assessment of the risk to population and/or infrastructures. To achieve this goal, information on landslide hazard is required; it involves not only the evaluation of the travel distance but also of the location and timing of occurrence of the events (VARNES, 1984), and the magnitude or intensity of the potentially hazardous phenomena(GUZZETTI et alii, 1999). These issues are addressed in our study that illustrates a method for evaluating high-detailed landslide invasion hazard on the basis of geological-morphological field survey, statistical analysis coupled with numerical simulations through Cellular Automata. The method has been tested on the northern sector of Monte Pendolo (Sorrento Peninsula) where pyroclastic covers, blanketing Mesozoic carbonate massif, were affected by debris slides–rapid earth/debris flows that reached the town of Gragnano in the last decades (MELE & DEL PRETE, 1999; DI CRESCENZO et alii, 2008). The proposed approach for the evaluation of landslide invasion hazard, is used to predict where presumably future events could arrive, after the assessment of where and how frequently landslides will occur and how large they will be.