Fausto Guzzetti

The 2008 Union Service Award is awarded to Fausto Guzzetti in recognition of his outstanding leadership services for the Union in general and for the Division on Natural Hazards, and also for his strong editorial role in the journal “Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences”.

Fausto Guzzetti is Senior Research Scientist with the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. For CNR, he leads the landslide hazards and risk assessment unit at the Institute for Geo-Hydrological Hazards Assessment, in Perugia, Italy. After graduating in geology from the University of Perugia in 1983, he received a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Bonn in 2006. From 1985 to 1986 he was visiting scientist at the U.S. geological Survey, Menlo Park, California. His current research interests include: landslide cartography, analysis of landslide types and patterns in relation to geology, methods for landslide susceptibility, hazard and risk evaluation, analysis of historical information for risk assessment, thresholds for the initiation of landslides, frequency-size statistics of landslides, and dissemination of information on natural hazards and risk. Guzzetti served as Secretary of the Natural Hazards Section of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) and as President of the Natural Hazards Division of the European Geosciences Union. An initiator of the EGU journal “Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences”, he is currently the executive editor of this journal.