Geologia per la Società e il Patrimonio Culturale

Goal of these research actions is to pursue solutions for the assessment of the geologic hazard and the environmental impacts of human activities.

The necessary knowledge for the achievement of this goal is provided by the basic research methodologies of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The activities are devoted to:

• understand the geological processes causing geo-environmental hazard;
• develop methods, procedures and recommendations to face hazard conditions, including education on the geo-environmental constraints to human activities;
• pursue specific solutions in order to reduce the impact of given human activities or engineering constructions, to enable their realization respecting the rules indicated by environmental legislation, and, if needed, provide technical and expert support to public legal controversies on these matters.

The Research Line includes the following activities:

• analysis of the geological hazard and geo-environmental impacts associated with the realization of engineering constructions (tunnels, dams, power plants, pipes etc...) and/or related to the presence of dangerous rocks and materials (asbestos, heavy metals);
• analysis of the seismic hazard (seismo-tectonic models) and volcanic hazard (eruption dynamic and hazard scenarios simulations) by studying crustal mobility at different scales and monitoring geochemical and geophysics parameters of geo-tectonic systems;
• analysis of the geological hazard due to landslides and deep-seated gravitational slope deformations;
• realization of geothematic maps and implementation of geodatabase;
• data management and dissemination by means of dedicated geo-portals and Web Map Services. Semantic, logical and physical organization of geo-environmental data sets (database, knowledge base, ontologies);
• education and training, at local and international level, on natural hazards and on the strategies to face and/or cope with geological hazards and natural disasters. 

Coodination: Fabrizio Piana, (fabrizio.piana(at)cnr(dot)it)