HERCULES

The main aim of the HERCULES project is to bring together a multidisciplinary team, to develop a step change in the understanding and monitoring capabilities of geohazards and in turn produce ground breaking new methods to boost the resilience of current infrastructure under changing climates. The project will employ a range of novel research approaches across multiple scales, from the macro scale through to the micro scale, including the integration of Earth Observation techniques, laboratory investigation and by investigating the ground behaviour at the scale of soil particles, experimentally using tomography and numerical techniques such as the Discrete Element Method. Our approach is unique, since in the design and implementation of the technology, a coproduction through consultation with the local community is foreseen.

The HERCULES project is financed under the H2020 program as a Marie Sklodowska -Curie action for research and innovation staff exchange (RISE). The goals of the project are to: i) exchange knowledge in a multidisciplinary environment between academia and industry; ii) develop new insights, approaches and technologies that support the needs of end-users to make both the built environment and infrastructure more resilient to the increasing threat of natural hazards due to the effect of a more variable climate; iii) train Early Stage Researches (ESRs) during their secondments between Institutions who will form the next generation of researchers leading academic and industrial technological developments in this field.

This project supports the consolidation of the activity related to the Earth Observation (EO) techniques such as interferometry for natural hazard managements. Eurac Research will contribute to improve the understanding of geohazards (landslides, flooding, debris flow, etc.) with advanced EO techniques. Moreover, it will be involved in training activities, workshop and scientific visit exchanges with companies and research institutions.

Contact person: Claudia Notarnicola

claudia.notarnicola@eurac.edu