Climatic factors influencing occurrence of debris flows

Wieczorek, Gerald F.; Glade, Thomas

doi:10.1007/3-540-27129-5_14

Cited by 216 publications

(166 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Both rainfall depths L. Panziera et al: A regional extreme rainfall analysis for a novel alert system and river discharges corresponding to predefined return periods are also used as thresholds for the alerts (e.g., Alfieri et al, 2011;Knechtl, 2013;Javelle et al, 2014;Fouchier et al, 2015). For some applications, precipitation thresholds depend also on antecedent rainfall: for example, when issuing landslide, debris flow or urban flooding warnings, the amount of precipitation measured in the hours or days preceding the onset of a storm event has to be carefully considered, since it strongly influences soil saturation conditions or the spare capacity in the drainage network of a city, playing a fundamental role in determining the severity of the hazard (e.g., Neary and Swift, 1987;Giannecchini et al, 2000;Wieczorek and Glade, 2005;Martina et al, 2006;Guzzetti et al, 2007;Sene, 2013). Soil moisture state is a basic input variable also of the US National Weather Service flash flood forecasting system.…”

Section: Rainfall Monitoring Nowcasting and Warning Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A radar-based regional extreme rainfall analysis to derive the thresholds for a novel automatic alert system in Switzerland

Panziera

Gabella

Zanini

et al. 2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. This paper presents a regional extreme rainfall analysis based on 10 years of radar data for the 159 regions adopted for official natural hazard warnings in Switzerland. Moreover, a nowcasting tool aimed at issuing heavy precipitation regional alerts is introduced. The two topics are closely related, since the extreme rainfall analysis provides the thresholds used by the nowcasting system for the alerts. Warm and cold seasons' monthly maxima of several statistical quantities describing regional rainfall are fitted to a generalized extreme value distribution in order to derive the precipitation amounts corresponding to sub-annual return periods for durations of 1, 3, 6, 12, 24 and 48 h. It is shown that regional return levels exhibit a large spatial variability in Switzerland, and that their spatial distribution strongly depends on the duration of the aggregation period: for accumulations of 3 h and shorter, the largest return levels are found over the northerly alpine slopes, whereas for longer durations the southern Alps exhibit the largest values. The inner alpine chain shows the lowest values, in agreement with previous rainfall climatologies.The nowcasting system presented here is aimed to issue heavy rainfall alerts for a large variety of end users, who are interested in different precipitation characteristics and regions, such as, for example, small urban areas, remote alpine catchments or administrative districts. The alerts are issued not only if the rainfall measured in the immediate past or forecast in the near future exceeds some predefined thresholds but also as soon as the sum of past and forecast precipitation is larger than threshold values. This precipitation total, in fact, has primary importance in applications for which antecedent rainfall is as important as predicted one, such as urban floods early warning systems. The rainfall fields, the statistical quantity representing regional rainfall and the frequency of alerts issued in case of continuous threshold exceedance are some of the configurable parameters of the tool.The analysis of the urban flood which occurred in the city of Schaffhausen in May 2013 suggests that this alert tool might have complementary skill with respect to radar-based thunderstorm nowcasting systems for storms which do not show a clear convective signature.

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Section: Rainfall Monitoring Nowcasting and Warning Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A radar-based regional extreme rainfall analysis to derive the thresholds for a novel automatic alert system in Switzerland

Panziera

Gabella

Zanini

et al. 2016

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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“…Our results reflect the fact that high water levels in channels and streams are required to trigger a debris flow. A long-duration rainfall event leads to a gradual increase in groundwater level, soil moisture, and pore water pressure (Wieczorek and Glade 2005), and this leads to the concurrent increase in surface flow in channels and streams. Therefore, similar rainfall intensity levels can trigger both landslides and debris flows if rainfall duration is sufficiently long.…”

Section: Rainfall Conditions and I-d Thresholdsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rainfall intensity–duration conditions for mass movements in Taiwan

Chen

Saitô

Oguchi

2015

Prog. in Earth and Planet. Sci.

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Mass movements caused by rainfall events in Taiwan are analyzed during a 7-year period from 2006 to 2012. Data from the Taiwan Soil and Water Conservation Bureau reports were compiled for 263 mass movement events, including 156 landslides, 91 debris flows, and 16 events with both landslides and debris flows. Rainfall totals for each site location were obtained from interpolated rain gauge data. The rainfall intensity-duration (I-D) relationship was examined to establish a rainfall threshold for mass movements using random sampling: I = 18.10(±2.67)D −0.17(±0.04) , where I is mean rainfall intensity (mm/h) and D is the time (h) between the beginning of a rainfall event and the resulting mass movement. Significant differences were found between rainfall intensities and thresholds for landslides and debris flows. For short-duration rainfall events, higher mean rainfall intensities were required to trigger debris flows. In contrast, for long-duration rainfall events, similar mean rainfall intensities triggered both landslides and debris flows. Mean rainfall intensity was rescaled by mean annual precipitation (MAP) to define a new threshold: I MAP = 0.0060(±0.0009)D −0.17(±0.04) , where I MAP is rescaled rainfall intensity and MAP is the minimum for mountainous areas in Taiwan (3000 mm). Although the I-D threshold for Taiwan is high, the I MAP -D threshold for Taiwan tends to be low relative to other areas around the world. Our results indicate that Taiwan is highly prone to rainfall-induced mass movements. This study also shows that most mass movements occur in high rainfall-intensity periods, but some events occur before or after the rainfall peak. Both antecedent and peak rainfall play important roles in triggering landslides, whereas debris flow occurrence is more related to peak rainfall than antecedent rainfall.

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“…In this respect, a relationship between triggering events (i.e., rainfall) and landslide occurrences needs to be established. To evaluate this causeeffect relationship, an approach widely used in the literature relies on the definition of empirical thresholds (Caine, 1980;Reichenbach et al, 1998;Wieczorek and Glade, 2005;Guzzetti et al, 2007). An empirical threshold defines the rainfall, soil moisture or hydrological conditions that, when reached or exceeded, are likely to trigger landslides (Reichenbach et al, 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of shallow landslide-triggering scenarios through a physically based approach: an example of application in the southern Messina area (northeastern Sicily, Italy)

Schilirò

Esposito

Mugnozza

2015

Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Rainfall-induced shallow landslides are a widespread phenomenon that frequently causes substantial damage to property, as well as numerous casualties. In recent years a wide range of physically based models have been developed to analyze the triggering process of these events. Specifically, in this paper we propose an approach for the evaluation of different shallow landslide-triggering scenarios by means of the TRIGRS (transient rainfall infiltration and grid-based slope stability) numerical model. For the validation of the model, a back analysis of the landslide event that occurred in the study area (located SW of Messina, northeastern Sicily, Italy) on 1 October 2009 was performed, by using different methods and techniques for the definition of the input parameters. After evaluating the reliability of the model through comparison with the 2009 landslide inventory, different triggering scenarios were defined using rainfall values derived from the rainfall probability curves, reconstructed on the basis of daily and hourly historical rainfall data. The results emphasize how these phenomena are likely to occur in the area, given that even short-duration (1-3 h) rainfall events with a relatively low return period (e.g., 10-20 years) can trigger numerous slope failures. Furthermore, for the same rainfall amount, the daily simulations underestimate the instability conditions. The high susceptibility of this area to shallow landslides is testified by the high number of landslide/flood events that have occurred in the past and are summarized in this paper by means of archival research. Considering the main features of the proposed approach, the authors suggest that this methodology could be applied to different areas, even for the development of landslide early warning systems.

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Climatic factors influencing occurrence of debris flows

Cited by 216 publications

References 57 publications

A radar-based regional extreme rainfall analysis to derive the thresholds for a novel automatic alert system in Switzerland

A radar-based regional extreme rainfall analysis to derive the thresholds for a novel automatic alert system in Switzerland

Rainfall intensity–duration conditions for mass movements in Taiwan

Evaluation of shallow landslide-triggering scenarios through a physically based approach: an example of application in the southern Messina area (northeastern Sicily, Italy)

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