Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Landslide hazards pose significant constraint to human development in many parts of the world, including Canada. The importance of landslide hazards is continuously increasing, due to growing population and infrastructure and due to the effects of climate change.Geological and GeotechnicalEngineering professionals have the task of reducing landslide losses. Tofulfill this role, practitioners require tools to predict landslide occurrence and behavior. My research group at UBC has for a number of years been at the forefront of research devoted to quantifying landslide motion.Our methods are in useby researchers and practitioners around the world, but they requirefurther improvement.I propose to continue development of our techniques in several specific directions. The first one is to formulate a systematic and objective approach towards calibration of models.Our approach towards dynamic modeling recognizes the complexity of landslide processes (e.g. Hungr et al., 2014)and favours a simplified approach based on back-analysis of full scale landslide cases. We believe that this is the best method todevelop practically-useable tools and we have already seen considerable success with this approach (e.g. Hungr et al., 2007). However, landslide behavior is a multi-dimensional process. Calibration requires careful description and back-analysis of multiple real cases, the development of a typological classification able to sort cases according to the physics of their motion and an objective method of selecting optimal calibrated input parameters. As part of this work, it is also necessary to study the sensitivity of the models to input parameters such as the digital elevation array and to develop specific improvements such asaccounting for internalrigidity of a moving landslide mass and incorporating a wider range of rheology to describe the relationships between flow depth, velocity and acceleration. Much of this work is already in progress as part of an on-goingPh.D. project (e.g. Aaron and Hungr, 2015). The second topic involves the development ofa new method to calculate the forces exerted by a debris flow or debris avalanche on a flexible barrier, consisting of a steel net. A Master's project has recently been completed (Ashwood and Hungr, 2015), but the topic requires additional data and more detailed analysis. I propose to do this as part of another Master's project, building on the results of the previous. A visiting student from the Tsinghua University in Beijing will work with my team next year on modeling interaction of rapid landslides with reservoir water. This is a new subject for me, but one that is practically important. A fourth potential direction is to continue the development of our new algorithms for modeling the movement of fragmental rock fall. Several opportunities for international collaborative research, connected with the above topics are being considered by my group.