RIDETHERISK · A Quantitative Risk Assessment for fragmental rockfall

A Quantitative Risk Assessment for fragmental rockfall

Rockfalls are a significant and growing hazard in mountainous regions, increasingly exacerbated by climate change. Rising temperatures, permafrost degradation, and more frequent extreme weather events are destabilizing slopes and increasing the frequency and intensity of rockfall events. These hazards pose serious threats to transportation infrastructure, mountain communities, and industrial operations such as open-pit mining. In this context, there is an urgent need for more accurate, comprehensive tools to assess and manage rockfall risk. Despite growing awareness, current approaches to rockfall risk management often fall short in providing decision-makers with the tools they need to quantify and compare risks across different scenarios. Traditional models often focus on the physical hazard alone, without adequately capturing the consequences for people, infrastructure, and economic activities. Moreover, a critical process (fragmentation, where falling rock blocks break into smaller pieces upon impact) is frequently overlooked. Fragmentation significantly increases the complexity and reach of rockfall events, making them more difficult to predict and manage. RIDETHERISK project addresses these challenges by developing a new, physically based approach to simulate rockfall propagation that explicitly incorporates fragmentation dynamics. This scientific advancement is integrated into a broader framework: a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) method designed to estimate not only the probability of rockfall events but also their potential consequences in both civil and industrial contexts. The QRA method will provide a robust, time-integrated tool to quantify risk in terms of human safety, infrastructure damage, and economic disruption, enabling more informed, transparent, and effective decision-making. The project is structured around three main objectives. First, it aims to improve the prediction of rockfall hazards by developing analytical solutions for fragmentation and implementing a new trajectory model that accounts for the behaviour of fragmented rockfalls. Second, it will create a comprehensive QRA framework that integrates hazard modelling with consequence analysis, offering a complete picture of risk. Third, RIDETHERISK will demonstrate the practical application of this method through two real-world case studies (one in an Alpine environment and one in a mining site) and produce technical guidelines to support its adoption by practitioners, policymakers, and infrastructure operators. Hosted by the University of Newcastle in Australia for the first 18 months and concluding with a 12-month return phase at Politecnico di Torino in Italy, the project brings together international expertise in geotechnical engineering, risk modelling, and applied research. This collaboration ensures both scientific excellence and practical relevance.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз