Hydrodril Project

SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME OF THE EUROPEAN UNION RESEARCH EXECUTIVE AGENCY SP3-People Support for training and career development of researchers (Marie Curie) International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IRSES

Grant Agreement Number 295225 HYDRODRIL

Integrated Risk Assessment of Hydrologically-Driven Landslides HYDRODRIL (Integrated Risk Assessment of Hydrologically-Driven Landslides) is a project supported by IRSES Programme within the framework of Marie Curie ITN (Initial Training Networks) aiming to provide high quality training to a group of young researchers, contributing to the development of a new generation of multidisciplinary researchers able to work in the challenging field of advanced computational and physical modeling of landslides and debris flows. The partnership of this multidisciplinary exchange programme brings together researchers from the European Union, Asia and Central America. The scientific goal of HYDRODRIL is to investigate and evaluate the risk and nature of hydrologically-driven landslides, therefore contributing to better understanding of the relationship between small-scale deformations in soil/rock structures, the failure mechanisms induced by these deformations and the following large-scale dynamic behavior, as well as detailed risk assessment. Major entities of HYDRODRIL will be the extensive monitoring at Huangtupo-landslide in the Three-Gorges region (Hubei province, China), the corresponding experiments on a small-scale model in centrifuge tests and multiscale modeling approach of landslides by numerical simulations. The multidisciplinary research group, consisting of experts in their respective fields, will cover geotechnical, geological, geophysical and geographical issues. The participating institutions are presented in Table 1.  The ideal of proposing an intense partnership was developed after a field-trip by Prof. Wu (coordinator) and some of his co-workers to the Three-Gorges site, following an invitation of Prof. Xiang from China. The main topics of the research project to be investigated are:

• Precipitation influence on unsaturated slopes
• Water infiltration in soil
• Propagation of water and raising of water table in slopes
• Water influence on the reduction of strength of soil
• Water influence on the factor of safety of slopes
• Assessing the risk for people and infrastructure
• Measuring changes in soil strength by means of geophysical investigations
• Protection and mitigation measures
• Understanding of water flow during drainage
• Provision of information and risk assessment with GIS.