Displacement of a landslide retaining wall and application of an enhanced failure forecasting approach

Abstract

The 10-mile Slide is contained within an ancient earthflow located in British Columbia, Canada. The landslide has been moving slowly for over 40 years, requiring regular maintenance work along where a highway and a railway track cross the sliding mass. Since 2013, the landslide has shown signs of retrogression. Monitoring prisms were installed on a retaining wall immediately downslope from the railway alignment to monitor the evolution of the retrogression. As of September 2016, cumulative displacements in the horizontal direction approached 4.5 m in the central section of the railway retaining wall. After an initial phase of acceleration, horizontal velocities showed a steadier trend between 3 and 9 mm/day, which was then followed by a second acceleration phase. This paper presents an analysis of the characteristics of the surface displacement vectors measured at the monitoring prisms. Critical insight on the behavior and kinematics of the 10-mile Slide retrogression was gained. An advanced analysis of the trends of inverse velocity plots was also performed to assess the potential for a slope collapse at the 10-mile Slide and to obtain further knowledge on the nature of the sliding surface.