EU Project IRASMOS - Harmonization of Natural Hazard Risk Management

Rock avalanches, debris flows, and snow avalanches are sliding and flow processes, subsumed under the term “extremely rapid mass movements”. These processes pose varying degrees of risk to land use, infrastructure, and personal security in many mountainous regions. Despite increasing efforts to quantify the risk in terms of potential damage or loss of life, most previous studies have achieved partial rather than total risk solutions. These short-comings were addressed within the EU FP6 project IRASMOS (“Risk Management of Extremely Rapid Mass Movements”), completed in May 2008 and including 8 partners from Austria, France, Italy, Norway, and Switzerland. IRASMOS attempted to review, evaluate, compare and augment methodological tools for hazard and risk assessment extremely rapid mass movements, crossing borders between hazard processes and between countries.