Understanding and managing geological hazards: are we moving from emergency to prevention?

I will start by briefly mentioning different types of hazards, sometimes even occurring at the same time, or in a sort of chain reaction, with one causing or inducing the other, and will focus in the first part of my talk on landslides, showing the outcomes of attempts to define thresholds for rainfall-induced landslides. In the second part, I will bring you underground, dealing with a peculiar and fragile environment, karst, where there is a very strong link between the surface and the subsurface, much more than in other geological settings. After that, I will touch the issues of how the local communities, the population feel geo-hazards: that is, knowledge, awareness, resilience. This to introduce the last part, where the emergency versus prevention issue will be dealt with, with a special focus on our role, as earth scientists.