Integral Risk Management of Extremely Rapid Mass Movements (IRASMOS)

Rock avalanches, debris flows, and snow avalanches are landslide- and landslide-related processes, subsumed under the term extremely rapid mass movements. These processes pose varying degrees of risk to land use, infrastructure, and personal safety in many mountain regions. Despite increasing efforts to quantify the risk in terms of potential damage or loss of life, most previous studies have achieved partial rather than total risk solutions. IRASMOS addresses these shortcomings by reviewing, evaluating, comparing and augmenting methodological tools for the hazard and risk assessment of extremely rapid mass movements. Risk considerations in dealing with natural hazards have become more important during recent years and a wide variety of methods and tools have been developed in many European countries. The key objectives of the IRASMOS project were:
1. To critically review common practice in hazard and risk assessment of debris flows, rock avalanches, and snow avalanches.
2. To evaluate the sensitivity of risk as a function of varying hazards, vulnerability, and elements at risk.
3. To discuss and quantify aspects of risk aversion.
4. To address cause-effect relationships between Extremely Rapid Mass Movements and their off-site and long-term effects in a multi-risk approach.
5. To develop methodological tools for an Integral Risk Management (IRM) paying equal attention to active and passive measures of prevention, intervention, and recovery.
6. To propose IRM strategies for detecting, monitoring, and responding to Extremely Rapid Mass Movements, given the constraints of data quality, availability, and analysis, and especially given the limited allocation of technical, logistical, and financial budgets.
On the local level, building codes and hazard zonation may benefit, be revised, or appropriately reformulated on the basis of IRM principles. The importance of risk sensitivity and risk evolution through time may warrant the implementation of obligatory regular quality reviews or audits to check whether hazard and risk maps are still up-to-date, or whether the local vulnerability to Extremely Rapid Mass Movements have changed substantially. The assessment of the design lifetime of various risk-related products will be an important asset for decision-support in this matter.
On the European level, results of the IRASMOS project may provide impulses for research focal points in sub-priorities. Moreover, with the gradual dissemination and acceptance of such best practice, future calls in EU Framework Programs may want to consider further and specifically targeted focus on risk-related issues in natural hazards research and mitigation, especially where their cost-efficient implementation is necessary.