Nowadays the use of remote monitoring sensors is a standard practice in landslide characterization and monitoring. In the last decades, technologies such as LiDAR, terrestrial and satellite SAR interferometry (InSAR) and photogrammetry demonstrated a great potential for rock slope assessment while limited studies and applications are still available for ArcSAR Interferometry, Gigapixel imaging and Acoustic sensing. Taking advantage of the facilities located at the Poggio Baldi Landslide Natural Laboratory, an intensive monitoring campaign was carried out on May 2019 using simultaneously the HYDRA-G ArcSAR for radar monitoring, the Gigapan robotic system equipped with a DSLR camera for photo-monitoring purposes and the DUO Smart Noise Monitor for acoustic measurements. The aim of this study was to evaluate the potential of each monitoring sensor and to investigate the ongoing gravitational processes at the Poggio Baldi landslide. Analysis of multi-temporal Gigapixel-images revealed the occurrence of 84 failures of various sizes between 14–17 May 2019. This allowed us to understand the short-term evolution of the rock cliff that is characterized by several impulsive rockfall events and continuous debris production. Radar displacement maps revealed a constant movement of the debris talus at the toe of the main rock scarp, while acoustic records proved the capability of this technique to identify rockfall events as well as their spectral content in a narrow range of frequencies between 200 Hz to 1000 Hz. This work demonstrates the great potential of the combined use of a variety of remote sensors to achieve high spatial and temporal resolution data in the field of landslide characterization and monitoring.

The increased accessibility of drone technology and structure from motion 3D scene reconstruction have transformed the approach for mapping inaccessible slopes undergoing active rockfalls and generating virtual outcrop models (VOM). The Poggio Baldi landslide (Central Italy) and its natural laboratory offers the possibility to monitor and characterise the slope to define a workflow for rockfall hazard analysis. In this study, the analysis of multitemporal VOM (2016–2019) informed a rockfall trajectory analysis that was carried out with a physical-characteristic-based GIS model. The rockfall scenarios were reconstructed and then tested based on the remote sensing observations of the rock mass characteristics of both the main scarp and the rockfall fragment inventory deposited on the slope. The highest concentration of trajectory endpoints occurred at the very top of the debris talus, which was constrained by a narrow channel, while longer horizontal travel distances were allowed on the lower portion of the slope. To further improve the understanding of the Poggio Baldi landslide, a time-independent rockfall hazard analysis aiming to define the potential runout associated with several rock block volumetric classes is a critical component to any subsequent risk analysis in similar mountainous settings featuring marly–arenaceous multilayer sedimentary successions and reactivated main landslide scarps.

The definition of landslide hazard is a step-like procedure that encompasses the quantification of its spatial and temporal attributes, i.e., a reliable definition of landslide susceptibility and a detailed analysis of landslide recurrence. However, available information is often incomplete, fragmented and unsuitable for reliable quantitative analysis. Nevertheless, landslide hazard evaluation has a key role in the implementation of risk mitigation policies and an effort should be done to retrieve information and make it useful for this purpose. In this research, we go through this topic of optimising the information available in catalogues, starting from landslide inventory review and constitution of a boosted training dataset, propaedeutic for susceptibility analysis based on machine learning methods. The temporal recurrence of landslide events has been approached here either through the definitions of large-scale quantitative hazard descriptors or by analysis of historical rainfall (i.e., the main triggering factor for the considered shallow earth slope failures) databases through the definition of rainfall probability curves. Spatial and temporal attributes were integrated, selecting potential landslide source areas ranked in terms of hazard. Data integration was also pursued through persistent scatterer interferometry analysis which pointed out areas of interest within potential landslide source areas featured by ongoing ground movement. The consequential approach led to the definition of the first hazard product of the city of Rome at a local scale functional for advisory purposes or the statutory level, representing a thematic layer able to orient the risk managers and infrastructure stakeholders.