Landslides pose significant threats to communities and infrastructure worldwide, necessitating the development of effective hazard and exposure reduction strategies to mitigate the potential risks. In particular, debris flows can be highly destructive landslides. The paper deals with an integrated monitoring system designed both to further validate an existing debris flow inception and propagation methodology developed by the authors and to fine-tune the landslide inception and warning model to be used in an early warning system. The design of the integrated monitoring system, the definition of the acquisition time of instruments, and the processing of the measured data were based on studies performed in the study area of Favazzina (Italy), which is affected by debris flows that are very difficult to monitor. The proposed approach used to design the integrated monitoring system may serve as a useful methodological tool to be adopted in similar geological and geotechnical contexts within the framework of risk mitigation strategies.

This paper investigates the possibility to detect the short-time evolution of the slow-moving Vomice earth flow, located in the northeastern sector of the Calabria region (South Italy), by combining the information obtained from two different drone flights, carried out in February 2019 and June 2022, with field surveys. The obtained results consisted of delimiting all landslide bodies constituting the Vomice earth flow, detecting landslide types and the state of activity, as well as identifying spatial and volumetric changes. The obtained results showed that depletion and transition zones of the Vomice earth flow are active, while the accumulation zone appears prevalently dormant. Particularly, in the analyzed period, the depletion zone was characterized by local collapses of the main scarps where several slides evolving in earth flows caused more than 20 m of retrogressive fail upslope. The maximum elevation changes observed in these zones were about ±5 m. The volume of the material mobilized by mass movements was about 114.2 × 10³ m³, whereas the volume of the accumulated material was approximately 92.7 × 10³ m³. The transition zone was affected by several slow earthflows that re-mobilized the displaced material located in the middle portion of the landslide and reached the accumulation zone. Overall, the results of this study demonstrated the practicality and feasibility of using UAV tools for detecting the short-time evolution of a large landslide.

Landslide susceptibility zoning is becoming an important topic in scientific literature, especially in relation to land-use planning and management. The methods employed to derive landslide maps for zoning purposes are generally divided into three classes: heuristic or basic, statistical or intermediate and deterministic or advanced. Based on the method used, the scale of analysis and the zoning purpose, three zoning levels can be obtained i.e. preliminary, intermediate and advanced. For instance, when basic methods on a small scale are used, only a preliminary zoning level can be obtained while the use of intermediate and advanced methods, on a medium and large scale respectively, can allow us to achieve intermediate or advanced levels of zoning. All that considered, and with reference to a particular type of landslide called debris flow, a three-step deterministic method has been proposed. This method is based on a combination of two advanced models able to both identify the most relevant predisposing factors of debris flows in weathered gneiss and pursue an advanced level of susceptibility zoning on a large scale. The methodology, applied to a debris flow event which occurred in the province of Reggio Calabria, showed that the results obtained when combining these models are coherent with the prior-analysis of the real event. This is the starting point for a susceptibility analysis of debris flow over a large area.