Sustainable countermeasures for rockfall risk management

Rockfall is one of the most frequent geological hazard, whose related risk can be particularly high in areas crossed by roads and railway arteries and characterized by densely populated towns and tourist infrastructures. Owing to the ever increasing urban expansion as well as climate changes, the interference between human activities and natural events has considerably grown in these areas. In this paper the use of low environmental impact countermeasures and appropriate tools for landslide risk analysis and management is presented and discussed, with special reference to the falling rock protection barriers, effective and widely used protection systems against rockfalls.