The Petra Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985, is characterized by a spectacular landscape but also by a great fragility fragile being prone to a diversity of natural risks (e.g. landslides, flash-floods, earthquakes) which can cause a potential danger to cultural heritage and visitors. The ‘Siq’, a natural canyon which constitutes the main entrance to the archaeological...

A proposal for the management of rockfall protection works on complex infrastructure networks such as that of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano through planned inspections. A conscious management requires an adequate planning of inspections and the determination of economically sustainable ‘thresholds’ of intervention. Since it is not possible to predict the frequency of detachments that...

A quantitative assessment of the risk of rockfall on a local scale is a complex and challenging task since both the randomness of the natural event and the unpredictability of the behaviour of the elements at risk must be considered. From a technical standpoint, the impact of a block against a building is a phenomenon with a lot of variability, because the location of the impact point on the building...

Rockfall net fences and drapery meshes constitute two of the most adopted protective structural works against rockfall hazard. During their life, they are subject to ageing, corrosion, and impact loads, with a consequent loss of efficiency or even effectiveness. Due to the variability of the environment and, more in general, to external conditions, a definition of a service life, although not unique but...

Rockfall net fence are a widely adopted rockfall risk mitigation measures, suitable for the great majority of the cases. Nevertheless, in particular complex morphologies, the trajectories of the possible detached blocks can be anomalous, with very high values of both the kinematic parameters of passing height and kinetic energy. In this case, a double line of net fence can be a convenient solution. In...