Updating EWS rainfall thresholds for the triggering of landslides

In this paper, the updating of rainfall thresholds for landslide early warning systems (EWSs) is presented. Rainfall thresholds are widely used in regional-scale landslide EWSs, but the efficiency of those systems can decrease during the time, so a periodically updating should be required to keep their functionality. The updating of 12 of the 25 thresholds used in the EWS of Tuscany region (central Italy) is presented, and a comparison between performances of new and previous thresholds has been made to highlight the need of their periodical update. The updating has been carried out by collecting ca. 1200 new landslide reports (from 2010 to March 2013) and their respective rainfall data, collected by 332 rain gauges. The comparison has been made by the use of several statistical indexes and showed a marked increasing in the performances of the new thresholds with respect to previous ones.