Landslide mitigation

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Landslide mitigation refers to several human-made activities on slopes with the goal of lessening the effect of landslides. Landslides can be triggered by many, sometimes concomitant causes. In addition to shallow erosion or reduction of shear strength caused by seasonal rainfall, landslides may be triggered by anthropic activities, such as adding excessive weight above the slope, digging at mid-slope or at the foot of the slope. Often, individual phenomena join to generate instability over time, which often does not allow a reconstruction of the evolution of a particular landslide. Therefore, landslide hazard mitigation measures are not generally classified according to the phenomenon that might cause a landslide.^[1] Instead, they are classified by the sort of slope stabilization method used:

• Geometric methods, in which the geometry of the hillside is changed (in general the slope);
• Hydrogeological methods, in which an attempt is made to lower the groundwater level or to reduce the water content of the material
• Chemical and mechanical methods, in which attempts are made to increase the shear strength of the unstable mass or to introduce active external forces (e.g. anchors, rock or ground nailing) or passive (e.g. structural wells, piles or reinforced ground) to counteract the destabilizing forces.

Each of these methods varies somewhat with the type of material that makes up the slope.