Mateo Moreno (30) does not drink coffee, so he doesn’t have to go to a coffee machine. “People always make the same joke,” says Moreno when he sits down at a lunch table at the University of Twente. “You come from Colombia but you don’t drink coffee?” The other joke that people always make: “So you came to the Netherlands to investigate landslides?”
Anyone who has never experienced a landslide is difficult to imagine how disruptive something like that is. Thousands of tons of earth and stone rip down from a slope in one sudden movement and destroy everything on their path. Entire streets and villages can disappear under the rubble. In the flat Netherlands landslides do not occur, in Colombia there are several hundred a year – with regularly dozens of deaths as a result. Climate change and deforestation have been increasing the number of shifts worldwide for years.
Moreno defended at the end of last month His dissertation on landslides In the Italian Alps. He did his PhD research at the faculty for geo-information science and earth observation (abbreviated: ITC) at the University of Twente. The Twente Faculty is also known at foreign universities for research into natural disasters based on geographical data, says Moreno. “If I was in Bolivia or in Thailand and I said: I do my PhD on ITC, then everyone knew what that was. Then they said: oh you know that, or that person?”
Moreno developed together with colleagues from Eurac Research In Italy a model that, based on satellite images, weather forecasts and other available data, predicts where and when the chance of a landslide is dangerously high. That model can help Italian authorities to warn local residents on time and to evacuate if necessary.
A relatively simple system
At the moment, most authorities worldwide still use a relatively simple system that looks at how much rainfall preceded a landslide in a certain area in the past. If the predicted rainfall exceeds that level, residents receive a warning.
“But that’s the weak point,” says Moreno. “Landslides are not only the result of precipitation. If you have precipitation on a flat terrain, that will have a different effect than on a steep slope.”
Models that Moreno and his colleagues developed take this into account. The rapid development of satellites and large quantities of available data have made that possible. He knows – often up to a few meters – the steepness, but also the vegetation, the soil composition and the average rainfall in a certain period of the year.
“We can explain as a result: you have a very steep terrain, or your bottom is very weak or has had a lot of rain. And the combination of all those factors makes the area unstable.” That is necessary to convince people of the danger, says Moreno. “Then people no longer think that the model is a kind of magic, but something with a real physical meaning.”
In the past, geologists climbed a mountain to estimate the risk of shift on the basis of soil investigation itself. “Highly educated people went into the field, looked at a slope and said based on evidence and expert criteria: this slope unstable.” That is a very effective method, says Moreno. “But you need a huge army of people to assess a larger area.”
Later, physical models followed, in which researchers collected very detailed measurement data and in fact simulated in a computer how the landscape would react to a large splash of water. “But for that you need a lot and particularly detailed data,” says Moreno.
The big advantage of a data -driven model such as that of Moreno is that as a researcher you do not have to fathom every meter of a mountain. You look at where landslides took place in the past and discover what circumstances have carried on it. As a result, it can be used in a much larger area.
The developed methods are also applicable in other areas and even on very different natural disasters. For the latest research in his dissertation, Moreno calculated the risk of natural fires in the Italian Alps. He used a similar method as before for landslides.
Moreno keeps his dissertation up. On the front is an image of a valley with landslides, burning trees on the back. “This way a study that starts with landslides can end in natural fires.”
Grip on a rapidly changing world
With the help of satellite images and data, researchers such as Moreno get a grip on a rapidly changing world. Other researchers at the University of Twente measure the salt level in the ocean, the temperature of the earth’s surface, the air quality and even how quickly certain crops grow on the basis of satellite images. They do not have to leave the faculty for that.
That does not mean that fieldwork has become superfluous, he emphasizes. “You can only model well if you understand what you model. Otherwise you may end up with a wrong representation of reality.”
As a bachelor student at the university in Medellin, Moreno was often sent out to map landslides. “On one of those days it rained so much that we had to hide in someone’s house for a few hours. When the rain stopped, we walked further down the path. We suddenly heard a hard noise, started running and when we looked back, a new landslide had arisen.”
The database with earlier landslides in Italy, which formed the basis for his calculations, was previously compiled by others with comparable fieldwork. His experience in the Colombian mountains helps him interpret and in some cases clean up the data. “It is often only a point on a map. Is that point placed at the bottom, in the middle or on top of the shift? Or could they not come close, and was the point on the road placed from where they could see it?”
Only when he is sure of all the data does he carry them to the model. Because as the adage is in information sciences: “Garbage in, is garbage out.“
Who is
Mateo Moreno?
- Year of birth
- 1995
- His parents are
- Nurse and chemist, with a preference for nature.
- Loved
- Dinos and rivers. “I learned the names of rivers from my head. When we drove through Medellin, I always looked out of my window to see which river we would cross next.”
- Previously worked for
- A power network manager in Colombia, where he investigated whether new electricity pylons are safe for shifts.