Abstract
More than 9000 potential deep-seated landslide sites in the mountain ranges of Taiwan have been identified by a series of renewed governmental hazard mitigation initiatives after the 2009 Morakot typhoon. Among these sites, 186 sites have protection targets where thorough mitigation strategies are to be implemented. One of the important tasks in the hazard mitigation initiative is to estimate the volume, fracture interface and related quantities of each landslide site. In addition, with this number of sites, an automated tool is needed to generate predictions at low operational costs. We propose to use volume-constrained smooth minimal surfaces to approximate the landslide fracture interfaces. A volume-constrained smooth minimal surface in the current context is defined as a differentiable surface that encloses a given landslide volume with the minimal surface area. Although the stratigraphy and geological structures are omitted, the smooth minimal surface method is verified with 24 known landslides and is shown to be able to generate acceptable, approximated fracture interfaces. A collection of assessment indices is employed to measure the fitness of the predictions. Finally, the prediction fitness versus the landslide scarp geometry is investigated.
Highlights
Deep-seated landslides pose severe threats to human lives and property
We propose a simple method for computing the failure interfaces of deep-seated landslides, that is based on the minimization of a smooth surface that encloses a given landslide volume with the specified scarp boundary
Despite these comparatively subnormal indices, the prediction is only 2.31% for Emean and a satisfactory 20.61% for Emax, as both the scarp area and volume are constrained in the present failure surface prediction method such that the mean depth has interpolation errors only and the maximum depth is generally proportional to the mean depth
Summary
Deep-seated landslides pose severe threats to human lives and property. Typhoon Morakot struck Taiwan in 2009 which brought approximately 2,500 mm of precipitation in 4 days to the southern parts of the island and triggered numerous landslides, debris flows and vast flooded areas. The tool is aimed at providing predictions with satisfactory accuracy at small operational efforts but not necessarily with high degrees of precision In this regard, we propose a simple method for computing the failure interfaces of deep-seated landslides, that is based on the minimization of a smooth surface that encloses a given landslide volume with the specified scarp boundary. The hydrogeolocal conditions include the rainfall and underground water hydrology, which alter the force balance condition of the slide mass and trigger the landslide Both geological settings and hydrogeological conditions are site specific details which lead to the deviations of the actual landslide failure surfaces from the predicted. With this amount of data, the accuracy bounds can be inferred
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