Management of Rock Fall Risk on the Main Roads of Southtirol

Abstract

The need for prevention acts against hydro-geological risk on road infrastructures in the Province of Bolzano/Bozen induced the Department of Public Works to develop a decision supporting methodology (priority list of intervention) based on a constantly updated system to investigate and catalogue the risk on the different road stretches. The system will soon become definitively operative for rock fall phenomena by an order of the Provincial Board. It entails a fast and easy survey of the slope hazard, a survey of the existent protection system and the estimation of the expected damage for each homogenous road segment. During the participation to the Interreg IV B Alpin Space “Paramount” (imProved Accessibility: Reliability and security of Alpine transport infrastructures related to mountainous hazards in a changing climate) a method to estimate the expected damage through available parameters was elaborated by the provincial administration; this method is also able to characterize both the intrinsic vulnerability of the infrastructure and its exposure to the hydro-geological hazard.