Monitoring and modeling of slope response to climatic changes

Abstract

Shallow slides are often triggered by climate effects. An understanding of the slope failure conditions and effective remedial measures can be achieved by comprehensive field monitoring of climatic and hydrologic changes and the consequent changes in slope responses. Two contributions from two different geographic regions are presented to gain understanding of the complex phenomena involved in slope failure studies. In the first part Alonso et al., contributes theoretical analysis of a stochastic model for the reliability of planar slides in a partially saturated soil, subjected to a rainfall history described as a time series and then presents a case history of shallow mudslides triggered by a Mediterranean climate, analyzed by means of a coupled hydro-mechanical modeling tool. The joint saturated-unsaturated consideration of the slide is necessary to understand field data. In the second part Rahardjo et al., contributes field monitored data from three residual soil slopes in Singapore and demonstrates how field monitored data on climatic, hydrologic, and slope variables were used to evaluate slope responses under subtropical Singapore climate.