Abstract
Transportation infrastructure in mountainous terrain and through river valleys is exposed to a variety of landslide phenomena. This is particularly the case for highway and railway corridors in Western Canada that connect towns and industries through prairie valleys and the Canadian cordillera. The fluidity of these corridors is important for the economy of the country and the safety of workers, and users of this infrastructure is paramount. Stabilization of all active slopes is financially challenging given the extensive area where landslides are a possibility, and monitoring and minimization of slope failure consequences becomes an attractive risk management strategy. In this regard, remote sensing techniques provide a means for enhancing the monitoring toolbox of the geotechnical engineer. This includes an improved identification of active landslides in large areas, robust complement to in-place instrumentation for enhanced landslide investigation, and an improved definition of landslide extents and deformation mechanisms. This paper builds upon the extensive literature on the application of remote sensing techniques and discusses practical insights gained from a suite of case studies from the authors’ experience in Western Canada. The review of the case studies presents a variety of landslide mechanisms and remote sensing technologies. The aim of the paper is to transfer some of the insights gained through these case studies to the reader.
Highlights
The integrity of the transportation network in Western Canada for securing uninterrupted fluidity of goods and people through the network are essential for the economy of the region
Negative values correspond to material loss and positive values correspond to movement towards the scanner
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Summary
The integrity of the transportation network in Western Canada for securing uninterrupted fluidity of goods and people through the network are essential for the economy of the region. Transportation corridors through the Canadian Cordillera and through river valleys in the prairies are exposed to natural slope instabilities and steep cuts required to accommodate railroads and highways, where slope-related hazards are common. Landslide types in these regions include rock falls, rock slides and topples, earth flows, deep seated rotational and translational soil landslides, and compound landslides [1,2,3,4,5,6]. After defining the scope of analysis, the framework requires characterizing the magnitude and likelihood of the slope failure, as well as the magnitude and likelihood of the potential consequences, which become the basis for estimating risk (combination of likelihood and consequence for each failure scenario analyzed)
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