Italy creates AI assistant to help assess landslide
Climate change is increasing the frequency of stronger storms, amplifying risks of landslides and floods and spreading them to areas that were historically less exposed, environmental research and protection institute ISPRA said. The share of land exposed to serious landslide risks rose to 9.5 per cent last year from 8.7 per cent in 2021, it said, with about 2.2 per cent of the population, or about 1.3 million people, living in these areas.
'Italy remains among the European countries most exposed to the risk of landslides,' the institute said, mentioning recent deadly natural disasters such as the 2022 landslide on the island of Ischia off Naples and the floods in Emilia-Romagna in 2023. The new AI assistant would help users navigate the existing IdroGEO public platform of maps and updated data on instability, providing information and answering questions, the institute said. — Reuters
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Observer
3 days ago
- Observer
Italy creates AI assistant to help assess landslide
ROME: More than a million people in Italy live in areas at high or very high risk of landslides and climate change is likely to lead to more of them, a public research body said on Wednesday, announcing a new AI assistant to help them assess the risk. Climate change is increasing the frequency of stronger storms, amplifying risks of landslides and floods and spreading them to areas that were historically less exposed, environmental research and protection institute ISPRA said. The share of land exposed to serious landslide risks rose to 9.5 per cent last year from 8.7 per cent in 2021, it said, with about 2.2 per cent of the population, or about 1.3 million people, living in these areas. 'Italy remains among the European countries most exposed to the risk of landslides,' the institute said, mentioning recent deadly natural disasters such as the 2022 landslide on the island of Ischia off Naples and the floods in Emilia-Romagna in 2023. The new AI assistant would help users navigate the existing IdroGEO public platform of maps and updated data on instability, providing information and answering questions, the institute said. — Reuters
Observer
4 days ago
- Observer
Portugal battles three large wildfires
CANELAS: More than 1,300 firefighters backed up by a dozen waterbombing planes battled three big wildfires in central and northern Portugal on Tuesday, with authorities putting most of the country on red alert for fires after weeks of hot weather. In the Arouca area, some 300 km north of Lisbon — where the largest of the fires has been raging since Monday -the civil protection service evacuated several dozen villagers from their homes and closed the scenic trails of Passadicos do Paiva, a popular tourist attraction. "It's desperate to see this ... we need help, we need air support," said Rafael Soares, a resident of the village of Canelas, recalling a devastating wildfire last September which burned 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres) of forest near Arouca. He blamed the fires on droughts linked to climate change that have left the area's forests bone-dry. Further north, a wildfire has been raging since Saturday in the Peneda-Geres national park near the Spanish border, enveloping nearby villages in thick smoke that led to orders for residents to stay at home on several occasions. Spain sent several waterbombing aircraft to help control the flames in the area. Three wildfires were raging in Spain's region of Castile and Leon early on Tuesday, the most severe one near Avila, about 100 km west of Madrid. People in the town of Mombeltran were ordered to remain inside due to the smoke. Hot and dry summers are common across the Mediterranean region, but more intense heatwaves have contributed to destructive wildfires in recent years amid fast-rising temperatures around the globe. Turkiye has suffered dozens of wildfires in recent weeks as temperatures have soared, and 10 firefighters were killed last week battling a blaze in the central Eskisehir province. At the weekend, several villages in Greece were evacuated and five people were injured in separate wildfires. — Reuters
Observer
23-07-2025
- Observer
Alexandria is most at risk along the Mediterranean Basin
From her ninth-floor balcony over Alexandria's seafront, Eman Mabrouk looked down at the strip of sand that used to be the wide beach where she played as a child. "The picture is completely different now," she said. The sea has crept closer, the concrete barriers have grown longer, and the buildings around her have cracked and shifted. Every year, 40 of them collapse across Egypt's second city, up from one on average a decade ago, a study shows. The storied settlement that survived everything from bombardment by the British in the 1880s to attacks by crusaders in the 1160s is succumbing to a subtler foe infiltrating its foundations. The warming waters of the Mediterranean are rising, part of a global phenomenon driven by climate change. In Alexandria, that is leading to coastal erosion and sending saltwater seeping through the sandy substrate, undermining buildings from below, researchers say. "This is why we see the buildings in Alexandria being eroded from the bottom up," said Essam Heggy, a water scientist at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the study published in February describing a growing crisis in Alexandria and along the whole coast. The combination of continuous seawater rises, ground subsidence, and coastal erosion means Alexandria's coastline has receded on average 3.5 metres a year over the last 20 years, he told Reuters."For many people who see that climate change is something that will happen in the future and we don't need to worry about it, it's happening right now, right here," Heggy said. The situation is alarming enough when set out in the report - "Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts" in the journal "Earth's Future". For Mabrouk, 50, it has been part of day-to-day life for years. She had to leave her last apartment when the building started moving."It eventually got slanted. I mean, after two years, we were all ... leaning," she told Reuters. "If you put something on the table, you would feel like it was rolling. "BARRIERS, BULLDOZERS, CRACKS Egypt's government has acknowledged the problem and promised action. Submerged breakwaters reduce coastal wave action, and truckloads of sand replenish stripped beaches. Nine concrete sea barriers have been set up "to protect the delta and Alexandria from the impact of rising sea waves," Alexandria's governor, Ahmed Khaled Hassan, said. The barriers stretch out to sea, piles of striking geometric shapes, their clear curves and lines standing out against the crumbling, flaking apartment blocks on the land. Authorities are trying to get in ahead of the collapses by demolishing buildings at risk. Around 7,500 were marked for destruction, and 55,000 new housing units will be built, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a crowd as he stood on one of the concrete barriers on July 14."There isn't a day that passes without a partial or complete collapse of at least one building that already had a demolition order," Madbouly said. Some are hopeful the measures can make a difference."There are no dangers now ... They have made their calculations," coffee shop owner Shady Mostafa said as he watched builders working on one of the barriers. Others are less sure. Alexandria's 70-km (45-mile) long coastal zone was marked down as the most vulnerable in the whole Mediterranean basin in the February report. Around 2% of the city's housing stock - or about 7,000 buildings - were probably unsafe, it added. Every day, more people are pouring into the city - Alexandria's population has nearly doubled to about 5.8 million in the last 25 years, swollen by workers and tourists, according to Egypt's statistics agency CAPMAS. Property prices keep going up, despite all the risks, trackers levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water, partly because the relative shallowness of its sea basin means it is warming up faster. The causes may be global, but the impacts are local, said 26-year-old Alexandria resident Ahmed al-Ashry."There's a change in the buildings, there's a change in the streets," he told Reuters. "Now and then, we try to renovate the buildings, and in less than a month, the renovations start to fall apart. Our neighbours have started saying the same thing: that cracks have started to appear."
