Numerical approaches are used more often to analyze the stability of rock slopes and valley flanks. This paper illustrates the investigation of the deep-seated rock slide "Steinlehnen" in Northern Tyrol by the continuum mechanics code FLAC3D. As no material parameters from in situ or laboratory tests have been available the determination of the parameters was realized by trial and error methods in the framework of inverse analysis. Adaptive Kalman-filtering techniques allow the estimation of material parameters by comparing the displacements of the calculation with the ones of the tacheometry. Due to the long calculating time at this point the Kalman-filter is used on simple slopes with a small number of grid points. The investigations show that the predictions of strength parameters are possible but still some optimizations are necessary.
Mass movements are natural morphological processes in mountain areas. They represent a danger for people as well as for infrastructure and buildings. Because of increasing settlement activities and the simultaneous appearance of extreme climatic conditions the analysis of landslides becomes more and more important. The investigation and installation of alarm systems targets on increasing safety and restriction of human, economical and environmental damage. In the last several years analysis of such natural phenomenons are more often done by numerical models (e.g. FLAC3D). The objectives of this study are the combination of monitoring data (tacheometer measurements) with a numerical model which represents the failure mechanism of the slope. Finally the model should allow the prediction of future critical states of the slope. It will be one central component of a new type of data- and knowledge-based alarm system. In the framework of the project KASIP (=Knowledge-Based Alarm System with Identified Deformation Predictor) a new calibration-method for numerical methods shall be investigated (Schmalz et al. 2010).
