Among all the natural occurrences, landslides may be regarded as one of the most relevant damaging processes. Geohazards are naturally occurring geological, hydrological or geomorphological phenomena that can potentially cause damage or uncontrolled risk increase to the human beings, their properties or the environment. Extreme natural phenomena causing natural hazards are not deemed as controllable events and sometimes they are perceived to be inevitable. Currently, in many developing countries, characterized by heavy concentration of people in restricted areas, poorly regulated urbanization, and uncontrolled land use, a natural hazard can result in severe effects, even if its original impact was not so critical. Even though the catastrophic impact of landslides in these areas is not totally unavoidable, it can be significantly reduced using different methods of mitigation and increasing the capacity to assess and predict risks caused by geohazards.
Furthermore, 2-D and 3-D numerical modelling methods designed to assess slope stability and perform back-analysis simulations have been developed in recent years to predict the behaviours of unstable slopes and their response to triggers. Nevertheless, such models still require access to detailed knowledge of the geological, mechanical, hydrological properties of landslides and boundary conditions.

This session is planned to collect contributions on the advantages and limitations of mapping and characterizing landslides in developing countries by means of low-cost techniques, in particular non-invasive methods like the geophysical approaches. Moreover, contributions on the reliable constrictions of engineering-geological models and on the optimization of stability analysis outputs and stabilization plans by means of non-invasive techniques are mainly encouraged. However, works that integrate various low cost survey techniques are also encouraged, especially if their application is capable of opening a constructive discussion about the non-invasive methods.