Constantinos Loupasakis

• Ph.D., M.Sc. Geologist & Dipl. Civil Engineer
• Professor at National Technical University of Athens

The present study investigates the reactivation of a paleolandslide due to the expansion of a community in an area covered by plastic Pliocene marls in the southwestern part of Cyprus. The landslide, which takes place in an area with gently sloping ground and relatively shallow water table, affects more than 100 residential buildings. In the contex...

The determination of swelling/shrinking phenomena, from natural and anthropogenic activity, is examined in this study through the synergy of various remote sensing methodologies. For the period of 2016–2022, a time-series InSAR analysis of Sentinel-1 satellite images, with a Coherent Change Detection procedure, was conducted to calculate the Normal...

Extreme precipitation events pose a critical threat nowadays, as they can lead to widespread floods and trigger intense landslide phenomena. Moreover, the resulting extended floods can subsequently cause additional landslide events. This occurs because floods have the potential to significantly alter the landscape of a region, rendering it, in some...

The island of Cyprus is characterised by a complex geological environment as it overlies a boundary zone of three tectonic plates, leading to high seismicity and intensive tectonism. It consists highly of Neogene marls, exhibiting serious geotechnical problems due to their high content of clay minerals. Along with strong, destructive earthquakes, v...

Landslides are natural disasters with a high socio-economic impact on human societies due to the considerable number of fatalities and the destruction of infrastructure that they cause. A comprehensive landslides inventory is vital for reducing this impact as it can be used in landslides susceptibility studies for the identification of the subregio...

Over the past few decades, numerous studies and technical surveys have documented a significant number of landslides activated in areas that had recently been affected by wildfires or floods, thereby suggesting a potential link between landslides and these phenomena. With the climate crisis exacerbating the intensity and frequency of wildfires and...

Cyprus has a long history of destructive tectonic activity and related geohazards. This is mainly due to its location on the Mediterranean fault zone and the interaction of the Eurasian and African plates. To study the occurrence of land displacements on a national scale, various space-based monitoring techniques exploiting the Copernicus program's...

From September 17 to 19, 2020, a Mediterranean Cyclone (MEDICANE), named Ianos by the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), impacted Greece, triggering a series of landslides nationwide. Among the hardest-hit areas was the island of Cephalonia. The 24-hour rainfall accumulation recorded on September 17 at the Antipata meteorological station, locate...

Turkey due to its location within the collision zone between the Eurasian, African and Arabian Plates, is a region prone to earthquakes. The country mostly lies on the Anatolian micro-plate, bounded by two major strike-slip fault zones, i.e., the North and the East Anatolian Fault. On 6 February 2023, the activation of a large segment of the East A...

Geohazard monitoring is crucial for building resilient communities [...]

Land subsidence in coastal and delta cities often results in infrastructure and residential building damages, while also increasing the area’s flooding vulnerability. The coastal cities of Messolonghi and Aitolikon are typical examples, as they are built on top of old stream deposits near the coast. In the last several years, the gradual subsidence...

This research focuses on the investigation of hydrogeological hazards in open pit coal mines. The study area is the Amyntaio sub-basin area, located in West Macedonia prefecture, Greece. A major part of the SE of this area is occupied by the Amyntaio open pit coal mine. In recent decades, the Amyntaio basin’s aquifer has been overexploited both by...

A reliable road network is a vital local asset, connecting communities and unlocking economic growth. Every year landslides cause serious damage and, in some cases, the full disruption of many road networks, which can last from a few days to even months. The identification and monitoring of landslides with conventional methods on an extended and co...

The main objective of this study was to investigate the stability of the Acropolis Hill, Greece, by developing a Rock Instability Model (RIM) based on fuzzy logic and remote sensing techniques. RIM aimed to identify locations on the rock formations of the Acropolis Hill that will potentially have instability issues due to the action of geomorpholog...

Over the preceding decades, climate change has affected precipitation, the most common factor triggering landslides. The aim of this study is to highlight this impact by examining the precipitation trends in the Chania regional unit, Greece, with the help of the precipitation time series provided by 21 local meteorological stations covering a perio...

The Special Issue "New Perspectives for the Monitoring and Early Detection of Geohazards" published in the Land Journal is a collection of research articles, case studies, and reviews associated with recent developments on the monitoring and early detection of geohazards, and is now open for manuscript submission using the following link: https://w...

Wildfires pose nowadays a serious threat for human societies as they significantly change the local environment and cause many fatalities around the world. Besides their direct catastrophic results on local ecosystems, they can also be responsible for the acceleration of other devastating phenomena, such as the landslides. This threat is rather cri...

During the last decades climate crisis has affected the precipitation patterns around the world, and since the precipitation is the most common landslides' activation factor, has relatively affected the landslide phenomenon. These changes, because of their ongoing nature, have render the landslide susceptibility assessment (LSA) a dynamic process,...

Landslides consist nowadays one of the most critical geological hazards around the world. The landslides susceptibility assessment of an area, which is used by scientists to identify the relative causes and to reduce their impact, usually requires the existence of a complete landslides inventory database of that area. The formation of such an inven...

Due to climate crisis, the number of forest fires and extreme precipitation events is expected to be significantly increased, in the following decades, especially in the Mediterranean area. The combination of these two phenomena can lead to extensive mudflows with devastating results to critical infrastructures, such as airports. In this direction,...

Nowadays, many modern cities have become extremely vulnerable to natural disasters because of their increasing complexity and impacts of climate change. At the same time, the adaptation of scientific methods to the civil protection mechanism and the diffusion of their results to the authorities and citizens, remains a challenge and in some cases, i...

In March 2021 three strong earthquakes with magnitudes (Mw) of 6.3, 6.0, and 5.2 occurred in Thessaly plain, Greece, on 3, 4, and 12 March, respectively. The modeling of all the three sources, by inversion of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar and Global Positioning System data, indicates a northeast–southwest-trending extensional stress fiel...

This paper focuses on the line-segment Bembo-Saint Francis of the masonry walls of Chandakas in the city of Heraklion, Greece. The construction of the wall was decided in 1462, but 100 years were needed until the design was finalized and construction began at the beginning of the 16th century. The line-segment was constructed as part of the fortifi...

Every year landslides cause many fatalities and destroy numerous infrastructures around the world. Due to their catastrophic results, scientific research studies are conducted, on a continuous basis, trying to determine the controlling and triggering factors, and to evaluate their contribution-weight to that phenomenon. In this direction, many of t...

The current investigation concerns the impact observed at natural and human environment, due to the implementation of the Aposelemis water supply project, as additional aqueduct of Heraklion and Agios Nikolaos cities, as well as other important tourist areas, in NE Crete, Greece. Aposelemis project is differentiated from standard water supply dam p...

The current research investigates the environmental and social impact observed today within the vicinity of the Aposelemis dam in NE Crete, Greece. The areas investigated consist of the two adjacent villages of the reservoir, namely; Potamies and Avdou village, respectively downstream and upstream of the dam structure and lake. The research was bas...

SCIENCE is a large bilateral project between Greece and China introducing advanced engineering research to the service of monument protection. In particular, SCIENCE develops a new approach to estimate the vulnerability of cultural heritage monuments through the innovative technique of multitemporal Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (MT-InSAR...

The ultimate objective of the SpaCeborne SAR Interferometry as a Nonivasive tool to assess the vulnerability over Cultural hEritage sites (SCIENCE) is to predict the vulnerability of the archaeological sites to ground deformation in time and space and protect them against natural/man-made damage. The SCIENCE project aims to develop, demonstrate, an...

The exploitation of remote sensing techniques has substantially improved pre- and post- disaster landslide management over the last decade. A variety of landslide susceptibility methods exists, with capabilities and limitations related to scale and spatial accuracy issues, as well as data availability. The Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (...

Investigation of Land Subsidence Phenomena in the wider Tirana (Albania) Region by applying Persistent Scatterer Interferometry Techniques.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is located in an arid desert climate with very limited water resources and scarce rainfall. Along with the fast development of the country, the water demand for agriculture, industrial, and domestic purposes increased and led to diminishing groundwater resources. In this study, we explore the land surface deformations...

A great number of landslides has been repeatedly reported in Aitoloakarnania and Evrytania Regionals Units of Western Greece; causing serious damages to villages’ infrastructure due to prolonged precipitations events. These phenomena have caused severe damages to provincial roads, which triggered several landslides between 2015-01-23 and 2015-02-08...

Advances in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry have enabled the seamless monitoring of the Earth's crust deformation. The dense archive of the Sentinel-1 Copernicus mission provides unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage; however, time-series analysis of such big data volumes requires high computational efficiency. We present a para...

Land subsidence in the coastal zone of the Neo Faliro, Moschato, and Kallithea municipalities, along the Faliro bay, has been recorded since the mid 1960’s. This phenomenon has caused damage to buildings, pavements, and roads. Aiming to identify the main causes of the observed ground deformations, data referring to the geological, geotechnical, and...

We studied the broader area of Thessaloniki in northern Greece and Chalkidiki and performed an InSAR campaign to study the surface deformation phenomena that have been known to exist for at least two decades. Sentinel-1 data (2015-2019) together with drill measurements were exploited to focus on specific sites of interest. Our results indicate an o...

For open pit coal mines, subsidence of the surrounding area and landslides are among the most common mining-induced catastrophic geohazards. These large-scale geohazards are related to both hydrogeological and geotechnical parameters, and they cause substantial damage. A major challenge to managing these hazards is that the factors that trigger the...

In the past few decades, Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) has proven to be a reliable tool for monitoring land surface deformations occurring naturally (landslides, earthquakes, and volcanoes) or due to some anthropogenic activities, such as extraction of underground materials (, e.g., groundwater, oil, and gas) with acceptable accur...

The focus of this study is Anthemountas basin in northern Greece, where land subsidence phenomena had been previously identified. The basin has a NNW-SSE orientation, which is optimal to the currently acting ~ N-S extension field in the back-arc Aegean area and is bordered to its north and south edge by two, well-pronounced faults. The region of st...

Land subsidence caused by overexploitation of aquifers manifests with an increasing frequency in several regions of Greece. The first signs of land subsidence have been identified since 1965 at the west side of Thessaloniki (broader Kalochori village region), in the form of a progressive marine invasion. Since then several areas have been investiga...

The land subsidence due to the overexploitation of the aquifer has slowly affect extensive area, causing significant damage. In the Amyntaio sub-basin during the last decades the aquifer has been overexploited by both the draining wells of the Amyntaio open pit coal mine and the irrigation wells, resulting to the activation of land subsidence. This...

The main objective of the present study was to investigate land subsidence phenomena and prepare a land subsidence map using spatio-temporal analysis of groundwater resources, remote sensing techniques and data mining methods. The methodology was implemented at the wider plain area extending northwest of Farsala town, Thessaly, Greece, covering an...

The main objective of the present study was to investigate land subsidence phenomena and the spatiotemporal pattern of groundwater resources in an area located in western Thessaly, Greece, by using remote sensing techniques and data mining methods. Specifically, the nonparametric Mann–Kendall test and the Sen’s slope estimator were used to estimate...

The main objective of the study was to develop a novel expert-based approach in order to construct a landslide susceptibility map for the Island of Lefkada, Greece. The developed methodology was separated into two actions. The first action involved the construction of a landslide inventory map and the second the exploitation of expert knowledge and...

Landslides globally have caused major socioeconomic and environmental impact annually. Climate change and occasional extreme weather events combined with human activities have increased the number of observed landslides in global scale. According to the Emergency Disasters Data Base (EM-DAT), landslides events per continent, have killed totally ove...

Land subsidence phenomena caused by the overexploitation of the aquifers require the holistic knowledge of the geological, tectonic, hydrogeological and especially the geotechnical conditions of the affected sites in order to be mitigated. The current paper focuses on the study of the phenomena taking place at the Amyntaio sub-basin, northern Greec...

Landslide susceptibility and hazard mapping has been applying for more than 20 years succeeding the assessment of the landslide risk and the mitigation the phenomena. On the contrary, equivalent maps aiming to study and mitigate land subsidence phenomena caused by the overexploitation of the aquifers are absent from the international literature. Th...

During the last decades, numerous methodologies for the construction of both susceptibility and risk maps have been developed in order to identify and mitigate geohazards such as landslides and secondarily land subsidence phenomena caused by the collapse of natural or man-made underground cavities. According to literature review, the conducted rese...

The site investigated is the Amyntaio basin where a productive semi-confined aquifer is developed at the quaternary deposits. In the present study, the piezometric curves which have been extracted before the beginning of the mine activity (1992), were compared with the recent ones (2015), aiming to study their diachronic changes. From the subtracti...

The current study investigates the catastrophic phenomena affecting Choremi village, at the west boundaries of the Megalopolis’ mines. For this purpose, field survey was carried out, failures in the houses were recorded, the level of aquifer was measured and soil samples were collected for the conduction of laboratory tests and mineralogy analysis....

The current study examines the possibility of simulating a quay wall foundation on a gravel pile improved seabed by using the finite element method. For this purpose data from the construction of the New Port of Patras were used. The behavior of the construction was simulated by conducting a series of parametric analyses altering the length and the...

The main objective of the present study was to investigate ground subsidence in the wider area of Farsala, western Thessaly basin, by means of remote sensing techniques and to identify potential geo environmental mechanisms that contribute to the development of the observed surface fractures affecting the site. In this context, a set of Synthetic A...

Land subsidence is a common phenomenon occurring in several regions worldwide.The current work focus on the industrial-commersial area of Eleonas, Athens, where vertical displacements were identified by Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) analysis. The rate of deformation in the study area according to the PSI results, during the period from...

The industrial area of Oreokastro, NW of the city of Thessaloniki, is monitored using radar interferometry to determine the spatial evolution of the underlying ground deformation trends. Previous studies, using SAR data acquired between 1992 and 1999, have revealed subsidence; however, the driving mechanism has not been, so far, solidly explained....

Land subsidence manifestation due to ground-water overexploitation in the Stavros – Farsala site (eastern part of Western Thessaly Basin) has been noticed since 1990. Because of this overexploitation, an excessive drawdown of the ground water level (20 to 40m) was noticed in the various successive aquifers the last decades. The subsidence phenomena...

Land subsidence induced by the overexploitation of the aquifers in Kalochori village has been occurring since 1965. The excessive water pumping led to the development of surface subsidence reaching, in several areas, the maximum values of 3 to 4m. The evaluation of the geological, geotechnical and hydrogeological setting of the wider Kalochori regi...

The morphological and geological setting of Greece, the active tectonics and the irrational human activities results to the fact that several natural sightseeing areas or even more, archaeological sites and monuments are located in areas with unfavourable geotechnical conditions. The selection of the proper support and protection measures in most o...

The coastal Byzantine wall of Kavala is located at the Panagia peninsula and it is founded on the Simvolou granite. The granite rock mass appears to be fractured by joint sets with very high persistence (>20m) and very wide spacing (60cm – 2m), forming large rock blocks. Further more, the Panagia peninsula is intersected by numerous parallel normal...

Οι εδαφικές υποχωρήσεις είναι ένα συνηθισμένο φαινόμενο που συμβαίνει σε αρκετέςπεριοχές σε όλο τον κόσμο. Η παρούσα εργασία εστιάζεται στη βιομηχανική – εμπορικήζώνη του Ελαιώνα , στην Αθήνα, όπου ανιχνεύτηκαν κατακόρυφες παραμορφώσεις απότην αξιολόγηση δεδομένων συμβολομετρίας σταθερών σκεδαστών. Ο ρυθμός εξέλιξηςτων κατακόρυφων παραμορφώσεων στη...

In the framework of the Terrafirma Extension project, a study has been established for ground motion detection and mapping in the Anthemountas basin (Central Macedonia). Terrafirma promotes the exploitation of Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) techniques, a remote sensing technology based on multi-temporal satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar...

A total number of eight (8) tailings dams are found at the Kirki flotation plant and are either built on impermeable Neogene formations or permeable alluvial deposits of the Kirkalon and Eirini streams. The tailings dams were originally constructed without any environmental concerns, nowadays their embankments are highly eroded, and toxic material...

Land subsidence is a common natural hazard striking extensive areas worldwide, with severe impacts on economy and environment. Subsidence has been recognized as one of geohazards needing research efforts and knowledge transfer at international level, especially when urban fabrics and infrastructures are directly involved in the land settling. Polic...

Land subsidence in the broader Kalochori village region, at the west side of Thessaloniki, has been recorded since the early 1960s reaching gradually, next to the coastline, maximum values of 3–4 m. Temporal monitoring of terrain movements are exploited and combined with in-situ data to enhance understanding of the deformation signals. Persistent S...

Land subsidence caused by the overexploitation of the aquifers manifest with an increasing frequency in several regions of Greece. In the broader Kalochori village region, at the west side of Thessaloniki, the first signs of subsidence were recorded in 1965 in the form of a progressive marine invasion. In 1969, during a period of intensive rainfall...

The main objective of the present study was to investigate ground subsidence in the wider area of Farsala, western Thessaly basin, by means of remote sensing techniques and to identify potential geo environmental mechanisms that contribute to the development of the observed surface fractures affecting the site. In this context, a set of Synthetic A...

Land subsidence is a common natural hazard striking extensive areas worldwide that can be triggered by geological and/or anthropogenic factors. In many cases, subsidence affects urbanized areas and causes remarkable economic loss. Adopted policies and solutions for land subsidence management can be various, but despite this variability, where mitig...

The main objective of the present study was to integrate the techniques and methods of Data Mining, Expert Knowledge and Geographical Information Systems for solving problems related to landslide phenomena. Specifically, the construction of a landslide susceptibility map was accomplished through the implementation of a predictive model that utilize...

The specification of the near surface ground conditions is highly important for the design of civil constructions. These conditions determine primarily the ability of the foundation formations to bear loads, the stress – strain relations and the corresponding settlements, as well as the soil amplification and corresponding peak ground motion in cas...

Temporal monitoring of terrain movements and satellite observations are used here to monitor geophysical Natural Hazards in northern Greece for the period 1992-2010, applying Persistent Scatterer Interferometry and Small Baseline Subset techniques, in an attempt to address their causes: anthropogenic or natural due to geological and geomorphologica...

Temporal monitoring of terrain movements and satellite observations are used here to monitor geophysical Natural Hazards in northern Greece for the period 1992-2010, applying Persistent Scatterer Interferometry and Small Baseline Subset techniques, in an attempt to address their causes: anthropogenic or natural due to geological and geomorphologica...

Land subsidence phenomena in large plain areas affect urban and infrastructure planning in many areas worldwide. The current study focuses on Thriassio plain, located 25 km west of Athens city, subjected to intensive urban growth, industrial development and intensification of agricultural activity. Available land motion mapping data, produced by Pe...

Mining activities impact the nearby environment, causing the so-called mining hazards. The land subsidence phenomena caused by the dewatering of the mines are listed among the mining-induced catastrophic geohazards slowly affecting extensive areas around the opencasts. These large-scale geo-hazards are related to both hydrogeological and geotechnic...

An urban-scale approach for monitoring seismic motion and ground subsidence has been implemented in the broader area of Kalochori, western of Thessaloniki in Northern Greece, by means of a multi-sensor network within the ongoing INDES-MUSA project (www.indes-musa.gr); funded by the Greek General Secretariat of Research and Technology. The integrate...

Seismic risk assessment of urban areas constitutes an inherently spatial problem leading therefore to an emerging need for urban-scale and highly-accurate monitoring schemes and recordings at the disposal of end-users and decision-making authorities for risk management, disaster preparedness and future urban planning. The above necessity becomes pa...

In the current research, the weighted linear combination (WLC) and the weights of evidence (WofE) methods were applied for landslide susceptibility zonation mapping in the Chania Prefecture of Crete Island, Greece. Several thematic maps representing various landslide conditioning factors, such as geology formations, faults proximity, altitude, slop...

To estimate the seismic response according to Eurocode (EC8) and almost all other national codes, site conditions have to be properly characterized so that soil amplification and the corresponding peak ground motion can be calculated. In this work, different geophysical and geotechnical methods are combined in order to define the detailed ground c...