University of Milano - Bicocca (UMB) has experience on soil and rock mechanics, natural hazards such as landslides and floods. The research group of Engineering Geology has significant expertise in landslide inventorying at the local and national scale, physical and numerical modeling, landslide monitoring and mitigation.

Within the framework of the IRSES exchange, UMB provided capacity on numerical modeling, physical laboratory testing, preparation of landslide inventories, regional-scale and local-scale hazard analysis for landslides, floods and other processes. UMB carried out exchanges mainly with Tongji University (Shanghai, China). The achievements from this collaboration are summarized in the following.

• Research activities/achievements within Geohazards and Geomechanics project

- A novel DEM bond contact model for modelling rock slope instability and submarine slope instability induced by methane hydrate rapid release.
- Liquefaction hazard mapping

Map of expected lateral displacement at different exceedance probabilities in 50 years. Red arrows represent the lateral spread measured during 1994 Northridge earthquake (Liu et al., 2016).

• Relevant Publications

Jiang M J, Chen H and Crosta G B (2015). Numerical modeling of rock mechanical behavior and fracture propagation by a new bond contact model. International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, 78: 175-189.

Jiang M J, Jiang T, Crosta G B, Shi Z M, Chen H and Zhang N (2015). Modeling failure of jointed rock slope with two main joint sets using a novel DEM bond contact model. Engineering Geology, 193: 79-96.

Jiang M J, Sun C, Crosta G B and Zhang W C (2015). A study of submarine steep slope failures triggered by thermal dissociation of methane hydrates using a coupled CFD-DEM approach. Engineering Geology, 190: 1-16.

Liu F, Li Z, Jiang M J, Frattini P and Crosta G (2016). Quantitative liquefaction-induced lateral spread hazard mapping. Engineering Geology, 207: 36–47.