ITALICA, an extensive and accurate spatio-temporal catalogue of rainfall-induced landslides in Italy

Italy is frequently hit and damaged by landslides, resulting in substantial and widespread disruptions. In particular, slope failures have a high impact on the population, communication infrastructure and the economic and productive sectors. The hazard posed by landslides requires adequate responses for landslide risk mitigation, with special attention to the risk to the population. In 2006 the Italian Department of Civil Protection, an Office of the Prime Minister, commissioned the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection (Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica), a research institute of the Italian National Research Council, to carry out operational forecasting of rainfall induced-landslides. Collecting landslide information in a catalogue is a preliminary action toward landslide forecasting. The use of spatially and temporally inaccurate landslide catalogues results in an uncertain and unreliable operational landslide forecasting. Consequently, accurate catalogues are needed to reduce the uncertainties, which are to some extent unavoidable. To this end, over the last 15 years many researchers have been involved in compiling a catalogue called ITALICA (ITAlian rainfall-induced LandslIdes CAtalogue), which currently lists 6312 records with information on rainfall-induced landslides that occurred over the Italian territory between January 1996 and December 2021. Overall, more than a third of the catalogue has very high geographic accuracy (less than 1 km2) and hourly temporal resolution. In contrast, less than 2 % of the catalogue have low and very low geographical accuracy and daily temporal resolution. This makes ITALICA the largest catalogue of rainfall-induced landslides accurately located in space and time available in Italy. Without this high level of accuracy, the precipitation responsible for the initiation of landslides cannot be reliably reconstructed, thus making the prediction of landslide occurrence ineffective. ITALICA's information on rainfall-induced landslides in Italy places a special emphasis on their spatial and temporal location, making the catalogue especially suitable for defining the rainfall conditions capable of triggering future landslides on the Italian territory. This information is fundamental for decision-making in landslide risk management.