Dear Colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that we announce a Special Issue of the Sustainability journal entitled:

“Geomorphological Research for Management and Mitigation of Geo-hydrological Risk and Environmental Sustainability”.

The topic that we intend to address together with your help is very timely. We expect to receive many papers from geologists, engineers, agronomists, environmental scientists who have worked in the specific field of geomorphology for the management and mitigation of Geo-hydrological risk and environmental sustainability.

We hope you can submit a contribution to the volume.

Background

Every year around the world, a great number of natural processes like landslides, muddy-debris flows and floods occur. Their effects often involve urbanized areas causing severe damage and casualties. In many cases, this problem must be considered as a direct consequence of incomplete and/or uncorrected land planning that has permitted the urbanization of areas potentially prone to geo-hydrological hazards.

In the aftermath of such severe events, the mass media wonder how they can happen, and the scientific community gives precise answers that often seem obvious: "in that area nothing should have been built". The experts often propose the need to relocate residential or industrial areas. However, this has rarely been achieved because of the physical or economic difficulties and the reluctance of local inhabitants. Consequently, the preferred response is to use engineering measures for local remedial works.

This inadequate land-use management, in many countries, has been tackled by the introduction of mitigation procedures. This have included legislation for gradually instituted many regional and local planning instruments and special plans for areas characterized by very high geo-hydrological risk.

Although in these last years effective and valuable tools have been introduced to evaluate the risk to constructions in areas prone to geo-hydrological hazards, the disastrous natural processes continue to take a heavy toll.

The Aim

The aim of the Special Issue is to analyse the state-of-the-art in the field of land management in relation to Geo-hydrological risks. The volume will collect papers produced by different authors and groups working in the field of natural hazards, geo-hydrological risk, land-use planning and urban planning. Papers on case studies from all over the world will be very welcome. The aim of the Special Issue of Sustainability is to inform the international scientific community and especially technicians, politicians and urban planning authorities about the results of studies and research that have been carried out in this field, suggesting a sort of pathway for effective risk reduction and sustainable land management.

Prof. Dr. Francesco Faccini
Dr. Fabio Luino
Prof. Dr. Jerome V. De Graff
Prof. Dr. Carmen de Jong
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• flood, urbanization
• land-use planning
• risk evaluation
• risk mitigation
• urban flood resilience
• environmental sustainability