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INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

Landslide mitigation of Urbanized Slopes for Sustainable Growth

Alternative title: Landslide mitigation of Urbanized Slopes for Sustainable Growth

Awarded: NOK 4.3 mill.

The climate challenge is perhaps the most significant issue affecting numerous nations and businesses globally today. Society is witnessing frequent and extensive landslide events, such as landslides, snow avalanches, and flood avalanches, worldwide due to climate trends. Although Norway is vulnerable to landslides, China has the highest number of landslides in the world. Significant amounts of properties and human lives are lost each year due to landslides worldwide. Regarding landslide risk assessment, several initiatives are underway in Hong Kong and Norway. NTNU, HKUST, and HKU have complementary expertise and interests and are leaders in research and education related to landslides. Therefore, collaboration with HKUST and HKU will expand the scope of activities related to education, research, and innovation to reduce the risk of landslides. The project is now associated with NTNU's recently established center, Green2050, which focuses on the green shift in built environments. The center aims to be a coordinated national effort, closely collaborating with the industry to leverage and develop expertise, methods, tools, and strategies for achieving a sustainable built environment aimed at a green transition and a digital future. Landslides are one of the main focus areas of the center's academic activities. To meet climate and sustainability goals, it is necessary to strengthen international collaboration. The center aspires to be a key player in climate action and will actively collaborate with international environments, including HKU and HKUST, to deliver results. The center is actively working to attract top researchers and academic resources from around the world to develop future climate-friendly solutions for societal development.

LIFELONG project deals with knowledge transfer through joint education and research activities between NTNU, HKUST and HKU. The topic of collaboration is landslide mitigation urbanized slopes. In the context of climate change, the topics is of highest relevance for Norway and China. LIFELONG is an initiative to internationalise the efforts that is being made by SFI KLIMA2050. The overall idea of the LIFELONG is to combine the efforts that is being made by the partners to support impactful research and education on the topics: Innovative and environmentally sustainable methods for landslide mitigation, Real time early warning system for shallow landslides at a regional or local scale will be included. Application of IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML) to interact with the environment that will reduce the landslide risks with advanced technology for real-time monitoring of landslides. These topics are selected to increase the understanding among planners and decision makers of the process creating the landslides and impact of preventive measures. LIFELONG will also contribute to move focus from repair to mitigation investments to reduce risk of life and health and save direct and indirect societal costs.The project is a comprehensive education and training program to link cutting-edge, innovative, high-tech research with tangible examples from the natural world of a student or researcher-in-training. This will inspire students and encourage them to learn about the earth, soils, artificial materials and how to design sustainable engineering projects on landslide prone areas. The projects outreach programs are designed to captivate a diverse group of student and engineers and will foster interest in the interdependence between societal well-being, the engineered infrastructure and the natural world. LIFELONG will contribute to e.g. UNs SDG Targets 6.6, 9.1 and 11 dealing with water triggered hazards and urban planning.

Funding scheme:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research