The global objectives of the school are to provide a high-level training to European young scientists, focusing the complex processes interactions between “Landslides and Other Geological Hazards in Active Volcanic Environments”, and promote scientific and technological excellence in the science of natural hazards by organizing a multi-disciplinary high-level school in 2016, in São Miguel Island (Azores Archipelago, Portugal). This school follow the previous FORM-OSE training schools focused on: “Living with hydro-geomorphological risks: from theory to practice”, held in Strasbourg (France) on 2004; “Multi-Risks: concepts to approach multiple hazards”, held in Bonn (Germany) on 2006; “Quantitative Risk Assessment”, in Barcelona (Spain) on 2008; “Coastal Hazard Assessment and Risk Management”, in Caen (France) on 2011; and "Protecting Mountain Societies from Natural Hazards: Plans or Dams?", in Barcelonnette (France) in 2013.

 

The scope of this course is to provide an overview of landslides and other geological hazards processes and their complex interactions and to present a state of the art for concepts, research, models, monitoring techniques/technologies and warning systems. Updated knowledge on traditional and innovative multidisciplinary methods and techniques will be presented. Landslides and their triggering mechanisms, namely rainfall, seismicity and volcanic eruptions, will be explored not restricting their role as triggering factors, but considering all as main characters in a hazardous scenario.

 

The course will be held on the Azores Archipelago, an archipelago composed by nine volcanic islands located in the North Atlantic Ocean. Due to its geographical and geodynamic setting it offers a wide diversity of natural hazards. In fact, São Miguel Island is one of the most affected islands by natural hazards, namely by volcanic eruptions, volcanic degassing processes, earthquakes, storms, landslides, floods and tsunamis. Since its settlement, in the fifteen century, hundreds of cascade events were responsible for victims and important socioeconomic impact. By this diversity of natural phenomena, this area is considered an important natural laboratory and perfect for the application of several methods and techniques during the course training and field trips.

 

The course will last six full days, including two days of field work, one at Furnas Volcano and other at Fogo and Sete Cidades volcanoes. It will include theoretical lessons and practical training to enable the participants to be acquainted with high-standard methods for the recognition, monitoring and modeling of landslides and other geological hazards.

 

Particular emphasis will be given in the field work to landslides and their impact on Furnas, Fogo and Sete Cidades volcanoes, also addressed in the training classes. Students will have direct contact with different volcanic deposits and secondary manifestations of volcanism (e.g. fumaroles, hot springs). Different types of instrumentation will be visited (e.g. GPS stations, total stations, meteorological stations, hydrological stations, seismic stations and multi-parameter CO2 degassing stations) and aspects related with data transmission, processing and dissemination of information will be also approached.

 

Students will have the opportunity to deal with several scientists and civil protection experts and will also access to a broad catalogue of case studies from different countries. A multidisciplinary international team of scientists and experts will be involved, representing thematic areas such as geology, geography, geomorphology, volcanology, seismology, engineering geology, land-use planning, statistics and modeling. Teachers will come from different European countries, such as France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Spain and United Kingdom.