Review and latest insights into rock fall temporal variability associated with weather

Abstract

This paper presents a review of historical and latest insights into rock fall hazard temporal variability associated with weather. Reviewed research expands several locations around the world; however, focus has been on the recent advances in western Canada and from the author's experience. The recent research reviewed has provided new insights into the relationships between weather and rock fall occurrences and the recent focus on probabilistic approaches appears to be the way forward for rock fall hazard management. This paper also references some statistical tools for quantification of weather–rock fall relationships that allows better understanding of the stochastic nature of the phenomena. A decisive strength of how these methodologies are developing lies in the fact that adoption of probabilistic tools allows direct translation into rock fall hazard quantification that reflects its temporal variability. When coupled with weather forecasting, these tools can provide real-time forecasting of rock fall hazard. Moreover, some of these tools provide a way forward for forecasting the effects of climate change on rock fall hazards.