Monitoring and modelling of rock slides and rock avalanches

Abstract

Rockslides can appear in a large variety of types and with different characters which make difficult their understanding and the prediction of their behaviour. This contribution highlights some of the most important steps in rockslide monitoring and modeling showing the relationships between them. Monitoring is a fundamental step in the understanding of such phenomena. The analysis of the possible types of failure and collapse are extremely important especially when a rapid acceleration, a successive transformation in a rock avalanche and a long runout are foreseen. Some examples of ground surface and subsurface rockslide displacements are shown and analysed with respect to the possible definition of thresholds. In case of a sudden collapse and long runouts erosion and impact against water reservoirs should be considered and this can be performed through different approaches. Some results of laboratory tests, two dimensional and three dimensional rockslide-rock avalanche numerical models are presented and tested against some case studies, together with the interaction with water reservoirs.