Rockfalls are a wide spread and increasing hazard in mountains. This can be due to, many reasons, for example the continuous extension of infrastructures, and in the Alps also melting of permafrost in rock faces. We define rockfalls as relatively small landslides confined to the removal of individual rocks smaller than 5 m3 from a cliff face. Compared to other hazards as avalanches, floods and debris flows, rockfalls are spatially confined to local areas. However, they can cause considerable damages in the runout zones. Rockfalls are also a process having a high level of uncertainty. This is due to the frequency and magnitude of events as determined by the conditions in the release zone and due to the semi-stochastic trajectory of the falling rock. Therefore, consideration of probabilistic approaches is inevitable
in studying rockfall.

Research on rockfalls helps to improve hazard zoning and planning of protection measures. The aim of this session is to present state-of-the-art methods for assessing rockfall hazards and for protecting against them. Further, the session aims at identifying future research needs. We are therefore interested in innovative and meaningful contributions about process analysis, simulation methods and protection and mitigation measures. This includes the presentation of theoretical, numerical or probabilistic modeling, experimental methods and experiences in the field or laboratory, and on the protection side all approaches for structural and natural measures or hazard zoning.