WAGER - War on Geohazards in a Peaceful Caucasus

This project aims to design a warning system that prevents disasters caused by landslides, rockslides, and avalanches in three Georgian areas (demonstrative labs). It will utilize data from geophysical mapping and monitoring, as well as geological and hydrogeological characterization, to identify triggers of natural events.
The main objective is to assess the geohazards due to climate change.
The integration of several monitoring methodologies, usually applied individually in geophysics and geochemistry, is the main novelty of the project. The results will contribute to the development of an Early Warning System.
The research activities will be integrated with training, publicization, and result dissemination, to share and transfer knowledge.

The project

The mitigation of landslide hazards strongly depends on the ability to detect failure precursors and requires continuous monitoring of sensitive and relevant parameters.
Remote sensing is commonly used to characterize and monitor the geomorphological features of mountainous areas impacted by natural hazards in various scenarios. Parallelly, geophysical methods for characterizing the mechanical and hydrogeological properties of the subsoil have been widely developed and tested.
Geophysical methods can support landslide characterization surveys and the continuous monitoring of landslide activity and potential accelerations driven by external meteorological factors. Among the available methods, continuous passive seismic monitoring has already demonstrated the capability to detect reversible and irreversible modifications in site stability caused by temperature fluctuations and rainfalls.