Abstract
Standardization of measurement procedures and their systematic performance are important goals in every field of science and are in general intensely pursued by scientists in many of their research activities. Certain phenomena, however, present particularly difficult challenges in this regard and many efforts are still needed to actually reach standardization and systematic performance of measurements. Debris flows are natural phenomena that certainly belong to this latter category. Due to their low frequency of occurrence, their short duration and their sudden and abrupt nature they are extremely difficult to be monitored. Only instrumented basins where debris flows occur with a sufficiently high frequency per year allow systematic monitoring activities. Even though during the last decades several such basins have been instrumented, field measurement data are still scanty and methods of measurement are not yet sufficiently standardized. An European Territorial Cooperation project named "Sediment management in Alpine basins: integrating sediment continuum, risk mitigation and hydropower" (SedAlp) has been recently funded within the Alpine Space Programme that has, among its tasks, to make some advancement in this direction. One of the expected outputs of the SedAlp project is a protocol on debris-flow monitoring. In this paper, in particular, we will discuss some open issues regarding the debris-flow seismic monitoring.