Prevention and cross-border management of risk associated with landslides

PyrMove is a European project that has been 65% co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra programme (POCTEFA) 2014-2020. In accordance with POCTEFA's main objective of reinforcing the economic and social integration of the Spain-France-Andorra border, PyrMove focuses on the prevention and management of risks associated with landslides that cause most of the damage on roads, dams, towns and activities of the Pyrenees.

The Pyrenees are frequently affected by landslides that threaten infrastructures, activities and people. Among them, the project distinguishes two potentially harmful events:

• Large landslides involving complete slopes that can include towns, infrastructures and activities on their surface and that are susceptible to accelerate and end into catastrophic failures.
• Multiple landslides caused by episodes of intense rainfalls that simultaneously affect large areas of the territory (MORLEs crisis).

Knowledge of this type of landslides, in particular their temporal and spatial occurrence, and their evolution over time are often limited, hindering a good management of the risks associated. For this reason, PyrMove proposes cross-border methodologies to assess the risk associated with these landslides, as well as tools to quantifiy, forecast and manage the risks. The proposed tools will be validated based on real events at several pilot sites and will be also applied to other areas and/or future climate scenarios.