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UAVs for monitoring, investigation, and mitigation design of a rock slope with multiple failure mechanisms—a case study

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Abstract

Slope instabilities adjacent to transportation corridors require timely and precise assessment to determine the risk to road users, particularly when weather changes trigger these instabilities. In southern Alberta, Canada, near the town of Drumheller, a 500-m-long, 60-m-high slope adjacent to Highway 837 has a history of slope instabilities that includes rockfalls, frozen soil falls, and debris flows. The slope failures have blocked the road which increases user and maintenance costs. Due to unsafe conditions and the steepness of the slope (1H:1V inclination), it was only possible to undertake visual assessments of the slope conditions from the road. Advances in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology have resulted in a quick and safe tool for collecting detailed photographic records of the slope conditions. The combination of UAV data and photogrammetry methods allows engineers to remotely, safely, and quickly perform a precise assessment of the slope instabilities. The paper demonstrates the use of UAV-derived data to evaluate the following: critical instability areas in practice; the magnitude of instability events; the relationship between the drainage network and slope instabilities, and models for rockfall trajectory analyses. The paper also provides a methodology that can be implemented on other slope instabilities to support the decision-making process to define mitigation actions that are practical and minimize associated risks.

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Abbreviations

AT:

Alberta Transportation

C2C:

Closest point method

GCPs:

Ground control points

GSD:

Ground sampling distance

GSI:

Ground Strength Index

INSAR:

Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

M3C2:

Multi-scale model-to-model cloud comparison

RMSE:

Root mean square error

RTK GPS:

Real-time kinematic global navigation satellite systems

SFM:

Structure from motion

SOR:

Statistical Outlier Removal

UAV:

Unmanned aerial vehicle

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible by the (Canadian) Railway Ground Hazard Research Program, which is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Canadian Pacific Railway (CR), Canadian National Railway Company (CN); and Transport Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    J. Rodriguez, R. Macciotta, M. T. Hendry & M. Roustaei

  2. Klohn Crippen Berger, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    C. Gräpel

  3. Alberta Transportation, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    R. Skirrow

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  1. J. Rodriguez
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  2. R. Macciotta
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Correspondence to J. Rodriguez.

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Rodriguez, J., Macciotta, R., Hendry, M.T. et al. UAVs for monitoring, investigation, and mitigation design of a rock slope with multiple failure mechanisms—a case study. Landslides 17, 2027–2040 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-020-01416-4

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