The behaviour of natural and artificial slopes is controlled by their thermo-hydro-mechanical conditions and by soil–vegetation–atmosphere interaction. Porewater pressure changes within a slope related to variable meteorological settings have been shown to be able to induce soil erosion, shrinkage–swelling and cracking, thus leading to an overall decrease of the available soil strength with depth and, ultimately, to a progressive slope collapse. In terms of numerical modelling, the stability analysis of partially saturated slopes is a complex problem and a wide range of approaches from simple limit equilibrium solutions to advanced numerical analyses have been proposed in the literature. The more advanced approaches, although more rigorous, require input data such as the soil water retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity function, which are difficult to obtain in some cases. The quantification of the effects of future climate scenarios represents an additional challenge in forecasting slope–atmosphere interaction processes. This paper presents a review of real and ideal case histories regarding the numerical analysis of natural and artificial slopes subjected to different types of climatic perturbations. The limits and benefits of the different numerical approaches adopted are discussed and some general modelling recommendations are addressed.

Animal burrowing along riverbanks has a negative impact on the hydraulic performance, and can have severe consequences on the structural integrity, of levees. Hence, as soon as burrows are detected during monitoring activities, it is strongly recommended that interventions are taken within the shortest possible time to mitigate disaster risk. The two most common engineering interventions used to repair the embankments (i.e., the excavation of the area with the following backfill or the injection of a low pressure flowable grout) may cause disadvantages and the weakening of the embankment because of the backfill soil lower compaction—which involves also the uncertainty of the complete filling—or piping and interface problems that may be encouraged by discontinuities of mechanical and hydraulic characteristics after injections of the low pressure grout. In this preliminary study, the possibility of injections of lime treated soil was investigated as a sustainable compromise proposal between the two mentioned interventions; oedometer tests on lime treated specimens of soils from the Po River embankment were carried out in order to study the effects of lime on the compressibility of less compacted soil compared to more compacted raw ones.

A recent increase in frequency and severity of exceptional climatic events is of concern for the stability of natural and artificial slopes. These undergo continuous evaporation and infiltration cycles, which change the suction distribution and trigger shrinkage, swelling, cracking, and surficial erosion, overall decreasing the soil strength. To assess the impact of these climatic stresses, the determination of water retention properties is a priority. Although advanced techniques have been proposed in the last few decades to this end, simpler commercially available techniques allow collecting data for a larger number of samples in a shorter time, thus enabling a basic description of the water retention properties for a larger database of soils. Data on two silty sands, coming from very different climatic environments in Europe, were collected with a combination of two simple commercial devices, and the results were modelled with a van Genuchten’s law. The fitted parameters were found to correlate well with the amount of fines, irrespective of the different origin and composition of the two soils. Eventually, the limitation of the approach is discussed based on the results of cyclic drying–wetting tests.