Papers by Corrado Cencetti
E3S Web of Conferences
A geotechnical monitoring campaign and a site investigation have been recently planned and undert... more A geotechnical monitoring campaign and a site investigation have been recently planned and undertaken aiming at the preservation and protection of the “Palazzone” Etruscan necropolis, an archaeological site dated back to Hellenistic period located 4 km from the city of Perugia, along the southeastern margin of the hill where the town is settled. The site includes some beautiful and monumental cavities, among them, the Volumni Hypogeum. The majority of the graves are underground cavities excavated in partially saturated alluvial soil deposits. Their inspection reveals the geological features and the depositional structures. The groundwater table is located about 35 m below the ground surface. Due to the difficulties of soil-sampling inside the ancient cavities, only limited portions of the material were retrieved for conventional laboratory tests, although not enough for a geotechnical characterization. On the other hand, XRD analyses and MIP tests were performed. The obtained result...
Land
Historical maps, especially those at a small scale and rich in detail (e.g., the old “Cadastres”)... more Historical maps, especially those at a small scale and rich in detail (e.g., the old “Cadastres”), represent an exceptionally important tool for understanding the recent historical evolution of landscapes. The note describes the example of the territory of Gubbio, in Umbria (Central Italy), where a map from the end of the 16th century shows a drawing of the hydrographic network partially different from the current one. A multidisciplinary study based on field surveys, observations of satellite images, archaeological discoveries, and archival research proved useful to confirm what was reported by the cartographer at the time. The possible causes that led to this variation of the surface hydrography up to its current configuration are then discussed in the light of other documentary finds from the archives, taken from the chronicles of the time, which have made it possible to identify, with sufficient approximation, the period where this change occurred. All this leads to a highlighti...
Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 6, 2014
Economic and social integration across Europe requires secure lifelines, such as roads, railways ... more Economic and social integration across Europe requires secure lifelines, such as roads, railways and pipelines. Existing and planned lifelines may come across a large number of different natural and anthropic hazards. For instance, past catastrophic events have dramatically shown that steel pipelines may be highly vulnerable to permanent ground deformation due to earthquakes and landslides. Therefore, their behaviour when exposed to processes that can generate large displacement and strain (co-seismic deformation and faulting, liquefaction, earth and rock slides and flows, rock falls) needs to be assessed. In fact, and in particular if toxic and/or flammable materials are transported, structural damage with eventual leakage might result in a severe risks for both human life and the environment, with associated relevant economic costs. To such purpose, in this work, a methodology for the assessment, prevention and efficient management of geological risks, mainly landslides, in steel buried pipelines will be presented. The proposed procedure aims at reducing the risk of environmental disasters and the subsequent huge financial and environmental losses.
"Dal fiume al mare" - Ripensare il litorale romano secondo natura, 2020
In addition to practical and cultural motivations, there is also a geological reason for the esta... more In addition to practical and cultural motivations, there is also a geological reason for the establishment of an urban area. In central Italy, a large part of the main historical and cultural towns derived from very ancient villages located on hilltops, close to alluvial plains. Height guaranteed a healthy environment compared to the lowlands, where wetlands, marshes and flooding favoured malarial conditions. At the same time, proximity to lowlands was essential for accessing communication networks, drinking water availability and raw materials. In most cases, the morphology of these hills has been a decisive limitation for urban development. On the contrary, the Pliocene-Pleistocene fluvial and lacustrine sediments forming these reliefs have been used for housing some important civil and religious facilities such as houses, storage areas, and tunnels, but also wells and tanks, tombs
Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment, 2017
This study examines plane failure analysis of rock slopes and discusses its effect on seismic act... more This study examines plane failure analysis of rock slopes and discusses its effect on seismic actions in a non-dimensional form, incorporating external loads transferred by anchors and stability indicators such as the depth of tension cracks and the failure plane dip. The results of limit equilibrium analyses, in terms of attained level of safety, are summarized in stability charts which can be used for design and assessment. Following guidelines established by Eurocode EC7, the stability is assessed through the R/E ratio, i.e. the ratio of the resisting shear forces (R) acting on the sliding surface and those promoting sliding (E). The proposed stability charts can be applied to various common practical situations, in order to provide a preliminary-but quantitativeassessment of the rock slope stability. As an example of an application, the paper focuses on the stability of a rock mass located at the bottom of the southern slope of the BSasso di Pale^mountain (Central Italy), at the outskirts of the village of Pale. As many other historical towns in Central Italy, due to their location close to rock masses, this site is particularly exposed to instability phenomena such as plane failure and rock wedge failure. The structural-geological survey allowed us to identify the main joint sets affecting the behavior of the rock mass and, accordingly, we examined the plane failure mechanism involving sliding along a single plane. Stability verifications in pseudostatic conditions have been performed by adopting the proposed charts, consistent with Eurocodes prescriptions.
Rendiconti Online della Società Geologica Italiana, 2016
A GIS Based method has been applied for the determination of the reduction in fluvial sediment tr... more A GIS Based method has been applied for the determination of the reduction in fluvial sediment transport, induced by small agricultural reservoirs. The method involves the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) for the estimation of the soil erosion (gross soil erosion) and the concept of sediment delivery ratio to route surface erosion from each cells to the catchment outlet. The SDR is often used coupled with RUSLE in order to reduce the over estimation of soil erosion provided by the RUSLE method itself. The process of sediment delivery from grid cells to the catchment outlet is represented by the topographical index derived from Digital Elevation Model (DEM). This procedure has been applied in the Upper Tiberian Valley (Tuscany-Umbria boundary, central Italy) in order to evaluate the pitfall effect of numerous small reservoirs present in this area.
The data collected during three piezometric surveys (1975, 1991 and 2001), carried out downstream... more The data collected during three piezometric surveys (1975, 1991 and 2001), carried out downstream of Montedoglio Dam, in Upper Tiberian Valley (province of Arezzo, Tuscany, central Italy) were analysed in order to evaluate the effects of the dam, built at the end of 80's. In order to carry out such study, the static levels of the existing wells were interpolated. With the term of spatial interpolation or prediction all methods (both deterministic and stochastic) allowing to know the value of a spatial variable, even where it was not measured, are classified. Obtaining a distributed information starting from a given punctual data is obviously a complex operation and it is strongly related to the interpolative algorithm. Within the two main groups of deterministic and stochastic interpolators, the authors considered 4 algorithms: 1. IDW, i.e. Inverse Distance Weighting (deterministic) 2. RST, i.e. Regularized Spline with Tension (deterministic) 3. UK, i.e. Universal Kriging (stoch...
1Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale Università di Perugia mail [email protected] 2... more 1Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale Università di Perugia mail [email protected] 2Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale Università di Perugia mail [email protected] 3Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile ed Ambientale Università ...
Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper provides a new statistical test to evaluate the threshold of validity for the... more ABSTRACT This paper provides a new statistical test to evaluate the threshold of validity for the Mean Stream Drop analysis. In the case of a constant area threshold, the method aims to provide a unique threshold value to extract the drainage network through a statistical test more efficient than those widely used. The proposal starts from the assumption that a minimum threshold value exists suitable for drainage network extraction. Then, the method proceeds with Horton–Strahler ordering of the network and statistically analysing the network geometry. This procedure is repeated for all the threshold values in the set under investigation, using a statistical permutation test, called APTDTM (Adjusted Permutation Test based on the Difference between Trimmed Means). Statistical significance is evaluated by p-values adjusted to account for multiple comparisons. As a final result of the statistical analysis, the right threshold value for the specific basin is identified. Classical procedures are based on a set of two sample t-tests. However, this method relies on the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance, which are unlikely to hold in practice. The APTDTM test presented here provides accurate p-values even when the sampling distribution is not close to normal, or there is heteroskedasticity in the data.
GeoInformatica, 2008
Dealing with the evaluation of the risk connected to the formation of landslide dams at regional ... more Dealing with the evaluation of the risk connected to the formation of landslide dams at regional scale, it is important to estimate the volume of the depleted material that can reach the riverbed. This information, combined with other elements (river dimensions, valley width, landslide velocity, etc.) allows making predictions on the possibility of river blockage. One of the problems of
Computational Geosciences, 2006
The analysis of the flood hazard related to the areas downstream of landslide dams is one of the ... more The analysis of the flood hazard related to the areas downstream of landslide dams is one of the most interesting aspects of studying the formation and the failure of natural dams. The BREACH code [14], simulating the collapse of earthen dams, both man-made and naturally formed by a landslide, was chosen in order to analyse the case of the Valderchia landslide (central Italy). The bed-load transport formula used in BREACH (Meyer-Peter and Muller, modified by Smart [27]) is based on flume experiments with well-sorted sediments. Such a methodology probably makes this equation not very suitable for describing the sediment transport peculiar to a landslide body presenting a very poor material sorting. The Schoklitsch [26] formula was implemented into the programme as an alternative to the Smart equation. However, because the landslide deposits may often have a strongly bimodal grainYsize frequency curve, the percentile D 50 (the typical granulometric parameter requested by bedload sediment transport formulas) can sometimes correspond to one of the grain-size classes which are really present to a lesser degree. To consider this phenomenon, the BREACH programme (version 7/88-1) was implemented with a new procedure that calculates two granulometric curves, one for each mode of the original distribution, and evaluates transport of the landslide material separately. Results of the analysis show that the model is very sensitive to the bed-load equation and that the procedure implemented to consider the eventual bimodal distribution of the dam material simulates the armouring phenomenon (which can stop the erosion of the dam during the overtopping phase).
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Papers by Corrado Cencetti