SUBLIME · Submarine Landslides Impact on Coastal and Offshore Environments: Modelling and Forecasting

The influence of human activities on the marine geological environment has reached an unprecedented magnitude throughout history. The decomposition of hydrates within reservoirs due to changes in temperature and pressure conditions can result in the release of overpressured fluids, potentially triggering submarine slope failures that pose significant risks to offshore engineering developments and marine ecosystems. Nonetheless, the existing research in this field is deficient in providing a comprehensive assessment of the entire lifecycle of submarine landslide hazard chains. This research aims to understand the complex geophysical processes that cause submarine slopes to evolve and fail in the context of overpressured fluid transport in marine sediments, addressing a critical gap in our understanding of submarine slope instability and has important implications for fundamental geophysics, risk assessment, and climate change. To achieve our objectives, we will characterize the physical and mechanical properties of seabed geological bodies and fluids and develop a coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model with the Random Field Theory approach to capture the material heterogeneity in the micro- and macro-scales (WP1), conduct laboratory-scale experiments for obtaining quantitative parameters and use CFD method to study submarine slope failure caused by overpressured fluid transport, reproducing the life cycle process of submarine landslides (WP2), develop a highly scalable numerical model based on the open source code Hydro3D to evaluate the impact of submarine slope failure on infrastructures and the submarine environment using field observation data (WPs3-4), and ultimately implement comprehensive training activities and IP transformation, and develop an integrated offshore geohazard management framework for the sustainable exploitation of offshore resources (WP5).