Holistic rockfall risk assessment in high mountain areas affected by seismic activity: Application to the Uspallata valley, Central Andes, Chile.

Over large regions exposed to natural disasters, cascading effects resulting from complex or concatenated natural processes may represent a large portion of total risk. Populated high-mountain environments are a major concern, and methods for large-scale quantitative risk analyses are urgently required to improve risk mitigation. This article presents a comprehensive quantitative rockfall risk assessment over a large archetypal valley of the Andean mountains, in Central Chile, which integrates a wide spectrum of elements at risk.

Sustainable Development Goals and risks: The Yin and the Yang of the paths towards sustainability.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) define a path towards a sustainable future, but given that uncertainty characterises the outcomes of any SDG-related actions, risks in the implementation of the Agenda need to be addressed. At the same time, most risk assessments are narrowed to sectoral approaches and do not refer to SDGs. Here, on the basis of a literature review and workshops, it is analysed how SDGs and risks relate to each other's in different communities.

Towards a holistic paradigm for long-term snow avalanche risk assessment and mitigation.

In mountain territories, snow avalanches are a prevalent threat. Long-term risk management involves defining meaningful compromises between protection and overall sustainability of communities and their environment. Methods able to (i) consider all sources of losses, (ii) account for the high uncertainty levels that affect all components of the risk and (iii) cope for marked non-stationarities should be employed.

Assuming accuracy, pretending influence? Risks of measuring, monitoring and reporting sustainable development goals.

From the local to global level, indicators and reports are produced and published to support the transition towards sustainable development. Building from two European-level science-policy workshops, this perspective essay discusses the types of risks involved with such sustainability reporting. The analysis is rooted in the framework of the UN 2030 Agenda and sustainable development goals (SDG).

Upslope migration of snow avalanches in a warming climate.

Snow is highly sensitive to atmospheric warming. However, because of the lack of sufficiently long snow avalanche time series and statistical techniques capable of accounting for the numerous biases inherent to sparse and incomplete avalanche records, the evolution of process activity in a warming climate remains little known. Filling this gap requires innovative approaches that put avalanche activity into a long-term context.

Force fluctuations on a wall in interaction with a granular lid-driven cavity flow.

The force fluctuations experienced by a boundary wall subjected to a lid-driven cavity flow are investigated by means of numerical simulations based on the discrete-element method. The time-averaged dynamics inside the cavity volume and the resulting steady force on the wall are governed by the boundary macroscopic inertial number, the latter being derived from the shearing velocity and the confinement pressure imposed at the top. The force fluctuations are quantified through measuring both the autocorrelation of force time series and the distributions of grain-wall forces, at distinct spatial scales from particle scale to wall scale.

Impacts of land-use and land-cover changes on rockfall propagation: Insights from the Grenoble conurbation.

Several studies have debated the incidence of global warming on the probability of rock instability, whereas the impacts of land use and land cover (LULC) changes on rockfall propagation and associated hazards have received comparably little interest. In this study we evaluate the impacts of LULC changes on rockfall hazards on the slopes above the village of Crolles (Chartreuse massif, Grenoble conurbation, French Alps) through a three-level approach: (i) diachronic landscape analysis for four different periods of the past (i.e.