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Central America is a region plagued with different kinds of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions and droughts. Following the Hurricane Mitch Disaster in 1998, which set many of the Central America countries back 10 years in economic development, the Government of Norway has supported a number of project to reduce the catastrophic consequences of future events.

The paper summarizes the experience with two Norwegian-supported institutional cooperation programs for strengthening the capacity in Nicaragua and El Salvador to deal with the landslide hazard. A regional training program with participation from 6 Central America countries is also highlighted. This program is executed by CEPREDENAC with funding from Norway.

Population growth and human activities as its consequence, development of residential zones, life lines such as power lines, water canals, gas and oil pipelines, and road construction, bring the population close to mountainous areas. Unfortunately, due to lack of detailed study of slope stability the number of landslide events triggered by earthquakes and heavy rainfalls has increased in such regions. In 1990, Fatalak landslide (north-western Iran) triggered by Roudbar earthquake caused 173 casualties, and in 1998, Abikar landslide (western Iran) in Chahar-Mahal Province caused 53 casualties after a heavy rainfall period (Shoaei and Ghayoumian 1997). Predicting the time to failure in susceptible slopes and evaluating the risk of their occurrence including evaluating the casualties and damages to people properties are the main responsibilities of landslide researchers. In addition, description, analyzing, and interpretation of landslide mechanism are some of the major steps for approaching the best method to control such disaster. Unconformity between the results of landslide hazard zonation maps and the occurred natural events in the field is one of the problems for an accurate landslide investigation by applying common methods. A major reason in such failure would be the complexity of mechanism and the high cost of detail investigations on each effective factor. It is often that such complexity prevents applying the result of an investigation in a landslide to another neighbor slide. Thus, monitoring of slopes behavior includes all effective controlling factors, seems necessary for a detail research. To investigate the results reliability in such monitoring that suggests the most effective remedial measures and prevention method, an active landslide at the north of Tehran City (Iran) was selected. Akha Village landslide is located along one of the major roads connecting Tehran to Caspian coast at the north of Iran. Based on GPS monitoring and controlling the accuracy of results by field reconnaissance, in addition to basic data and information, some remedial measures and prevention works were suggested. This paper is a brief description out of the final report of this investigation, which was carried out by Soil Conservation and Watershed Management Research Institute (Tehran, Iran) and as a part of IGCP-425 project in the country.

This contribution illustrates the capabilities of groundbased SAR interferometry (GBInSAR) to be used as an early warning for the detection of precursory ground displacements that can suggest the imminent occurrence of a slope failure. SAR data were acquired by a ground-based SAR system, belonging to the LISA interferometer series designed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, over the Cortenova rock slide (Regione Lombardia, Italy) and interferometrically analyzed in near-real time. The system was used to provide, during the 2002–2003 emergency caused by the landslide reactivation, the civil protection authorities with an operational tool for the assessment of the mass movement temporal evolution. After the main rupture occurred at the beginning of December 2002, which caused severe damage to the Bindo Village, destroying several houses and factories, interrupting one key connection road and partially damming a river, concern over the occurrence of further collapses of the still unstable slope led to the evacuation of 900 people living close to the run-out area. Such a situation induced the civil protection authorities to arrange a real-time monitoring system. Measurements of ground displacements continuously collected by the radar system up to May 2003, besides detecting the portions of the slope affected by movement, revealed the gradual deceleration of the residual movements passing from 5 cm d to 0.3 cm d.

The Fugoppe Cave, Hokkaido, Japan is known as a unique engraved walls designated as National Cultural Heritage formed in ca. 1 600 yr B.P. The Fugoppe Cave is composed of Neogene tuffaceous sandstones and has been weathered to easily fall and be spalled off along many cracks. Hence, according to the advices of the Committee for the Preservation of the Fugoppe Cave (Chairman: Masami Fukuda), we were making the photographic images of the three walls, one of which were divided into 116 grids of 50 cm long, and doing geological and geotechnical researching for each wall, such as evaluation of rockfall susceptibility of the walls.

This paper is describing the process and the results of the researching on the three walls in the Fugoppe Cave.

Sighisoara Fortress, named in the past “the pearl of Transylvania”, was considered the most beautiful and well-preserved town fortress from the Central and southeastern Europe. This medieval complex, with military, ecclesiastic and civil architecture, was well preserved during many centuries. Nowadays Sighisoara Citadel, situated on the hill, is affected by some landslide instability phenomena, endangering the medieval walls and towers and other constructions. The main objectives of the paper are the study of the geological engineering conditions in the area of the medieval fortress, the human impact and its influence on the instability phenomena and on the causes of walls and towers cracking and collapse. Landslide hazard assessment and mitigation measures in the affected areas are also presented.

The problem of natural hazard to historical places has received a great deal of attention from the world community in recent years. This issue has been discussed at international meetings such as the International Congress on Engineering Geology in Canada (1998) and the UNESCO Conference in Paris (1999). In response to the worldwide effort to protect historical places from natural disasters such as landslides, a field investigation was conducted by the Institute of Geoscience of the Russian Academy of Science under the International Geological Correlation Program, IGCP-425, “Landslide hazard assessment and cultural heritage”. The purpose of that work was to perform a hazard assessment of the Volga River Region, including a landslide inventory and detection of places where landslides posed a threat to historical landmarks. The results indicated that a number of landslides occurred on the high banks of the Volga River due to river erosion. The characteristics of those landslides as well as their mechanisms were studied. It was revealed that several historical buildings were in a potential danger due to slope processes, and it was suggested that further slope deformation be monitored. Other exogenous geological processes such as river erosion, abrasion and suffusion were also studied. It was pointed out that the creation of a cascade of water reservoirs has caused great damage to the environment of the studied area. In addition, many examples of bank destruction were observed at the Rybinskoe and Uglich Reservoirs.