The AVI Project: A Bibliographical and Archive Inventory of Landslides and Floods in Italy FAUSTO GUZZETTI* MAURO CARDINALI PAOLA REICHENBACH Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Institute for Hydrogeological Protection in Central Italy via Madonna Alta, 126 06100 Perugia, Italy ABSTRACT / The AVI project was commissioned by the Minister of Civil Protection to the National Group for Prevention of Hydrogeologic Hazards to complete an inventory of areas historically affected by landslides and floods in Italy. More than 300 people, divided into 15 research teams and two support groups, worked for one year on the project. Twenty-two journals were system- atically searched for the period 1918-1990, 350,000 newspaper issues were screened, and 39,953 articles were collected. About 150 experts on mass movement and floods were interviewed and 1482 published and unpublished technical and scientific reports were reviewed. The results of the AVI project, in spite of the limitations, represent the most comprehensive archiving of mass movement and floods ever prepared in Italy. The type and quality of the information collected and the methodologies and techniques used to make the inventory are discussed. Possible applications and future developments are also presented. Landslides and floods are among the most destruc- tive natural disasters. The yearly cost of mass move- ment worldwide can be estimated in billions of US dollars (Alexander 1989, Swanston and Schuster 1989, Schuster and Fleming 1986, Taylor and Brabb 1986). In Italy, regional landslide events have been extremely costly. The July 1987 catastrophic rainfall in the southern Alps caused damages estimated at US$1.4 billion (Guzzetti and others 1992). Single landslide events were also extremely costly. The Va- jont slide of 9 October 1963 claimed 1917 lives and cost more than US$6 million; the AnCona landslide of 13 December 1982 caused damages estimated at US$1 billion; and the damages caused by the M. Zan- dilla rock avalanche of 28 July 1987 were estimated at US$800 million (Catenacci 1992, Alexander 1989). Flood damage is also expensive worldwide. Floods in Asian countries cost more than US$5 billion annu- ally a decade ago, and since then the figures have risen steadily (Sehmi 1989). In Italy in the last 50 years, catastrophic floods along the Po River in No- vember 1951 and the Arno River in November 1966 left thousands of people homeless and cost more than US$13 million. Government and research institutions worldwide have been working for years to assess hydrogeologic KEY WORDS: Landslide; Flood; Inventory; Data base; Italy LAny trade, product or firm names are used for descriptivepurposes only and do not imply endorsement by CNR or the authors. *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. hazard and risk and to find effective remedial mea- sures (Brabb and Harrod 1989, Starosolszky and Melder 1989). Small-scale nationwide landslide maps have been prepared for several countries through bibliographical research (Brabb and Harrod 1989) or by interpretation of medium- and small-scale aerial photographs (Cardinali and others 1990). Data base information on historic landslides has also been pro- duced. Alger and Brabb (1985) collected more than 6500 scientific papers, technical reports, maps, and newspaper articles related to mass movement in the United States. In Italy, Guida and others (1979) listed about 950 papers on landslides and hydrogeologic hazards published from 1900 to 1978. Recently, the International Geotechnical Societies UNESCO Work- ing Party on mass movement has proposed a world inventory of historic landslides as a contribution to the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR) "to help the U:N. Education Scientific and Cultural Organization and UNDRO in understanding the world distribution of landslides" (UNESCO 1990). Within the framework of the IDNDR, the AVI project (an Italian acronym for Aree Vulnerate Ital- iane, Areas Affected by Landslides or Floods in Italy) was commissioned by the Minister of Civil Protection to the National Group for Prevention of Hydrogeo- logic Hazards (GNDCI) of the Italian National Re- search Council (CNR) to compile an inventory of in- formation on areas historically affected by landslides and floods in Italy. An earlier inventory of mass movement was made at the beginning of the century Environmental Management Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 623-633 9 1994 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.