The International Consortium on Landslides (ICL) has decided to create national networks in major landslide countries as well as ICL associates as a new category of ICL memberships to effectively facilitate the Kyoto 2020 Commitment (Sassa 2018) to be launched in WLF5 in 2020, Kyoto, Japan. New national networks are planned to be approved in 2018 ICL-IPL Conference on 4 December 2028 in Kyoto, Japan (ICL secretariat 2018). This preface will shortly describe the progress of the establishment of ICL Italian network.

Italy is one of the most severely affected countries in the world by landslide hazards. Landslides disasters strongly influence the socio-economic conditions of the whole country, threatening urban areas and anthropogenic activities and causing damages to infrastructures and cultural and environmental heritage, loss of productive soils and pasturelands, and a considerable number of casualties, injured, and evacuees.

The proposed Italian ICL network on landslides is formed by well-established scientific institutions, recognized both at national and international levels, with a long-dated expertise on landslide research for hydrogeological hazard assessment and landslide disaster risk reduction. ICL Italian network, proposed and coordinated by the UNESCO Chair on Prevention and Sustainable management of Geo-hydrological hazards (https://www.unesco-geohazards.unifi.it), recently established by the Earth Sciences Department of the University of Florence, currently counts 13 ICL members (7 full members, 5 associates, and 1 supporter). Other four institutions are currently under process of ICL affiliation and other seven are considering applying (Fig. 1.)

Fig. 1
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Location of members of the ICL Italian Network

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The general objective of the Italian ICL Network is to contribute at national level to “ISDR-ICL Sendai Partnerships 2015–2025 for Global Promotion of Understanding and Reducing Landslide Disaster Risk” proposed the during the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction organized in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan (Sassa 2015, 2017a), and to the Kyoto 2020 Commitment for Global Promotion of Understanding and Reducing Landslide Disaster Risk (KC2020) proposed during the Fourth World Landslide Forum in 2017 that will be adopted at the Fifth World Landslide Forum (WLF5) in Kyoto, Japan, 2020 as the development of the Sendai Partnerships 2015–2025 (Sassa 2017b, 2018).

Specific objectives of the network are as follows: (i) to promote applied research and development of innovative technologies for the prevention and mitigation of geo-hydrological hazards; (ii) to develop procedures to support risk reduction and emergency management policies in the framework of a regional and national system; (iii) to promote research and capacity building on landslides studies through scientific networking, academic staff exchange and training activity.

There is, indeed, a need to expand the network by involving other important national landslide research centers, with the aim of creating a key platform, for a more effective networking activity and a stronger collaboration within the Italian scientific community, in the perspective of a sound implementation of the Sendai Partnership (2015–2025) and Kyoto 2020 Commitment at a national level.

The Italian ICL network on landslides aims at improving the networking activities through a national collaborative work within the landslide research community by means of new multilateral scientific projects, shared capacity building strategies, and transfer of knowledge for the dissemination of landslide science. The Italian ICL network expertise is based on the use of innovative technologies and operative methodologies for the detection, monitoring, modeling, and forecasting of mass movements, as well as on the definition of operative methodologies for identifying triggering processes, assessing hazardous landslide phenomena, developing geo-hydrological models for land-use planning and risk prevention activities, and designing and implementing risk remediation measures.