A rainfall threshold for the occurrence of landslides in manmade slopes

in residual soils in the northwest of Colombia.

C.H. Hidalgo
University of Medellin, Medellin, Colombia
A.P. de Assis
University of Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper was to determine a rainfall threshold to estimate the probability of
occurrence of landslides in roadway slopes. The analysis was performed for a roadway slopes excavated in re-
sidual soils derived from igneous intrusive rocks from the stock of Altavista, Medellin, Colombia. The
threshold were raised in terms of total rainfall accumulated for short term of 1, 3 and 5 days and precedent
moisture in soil due to long term rainfall of 15, 30 and 60 days. Rainfall data and landslides recorded for a pe-
riod of four years were used to determine the thresholds. The thresholds found show that for slopes excavated
in these soils the amount of rainfall that triggers the landslide is about 50% of the rainfall that causes land-
slides in natural slopes in the same area.

1 INTRODUCTION cohesion and increase the pore pressure.

Landslides represent one of the greatest
geotechnical problems in countries like Co-
lombia. On roads in the Andean zone, the
problem of landslides results particularly
significant due to the injuries and deaths of
people, as well as its effects on mobility and
economical loses. Between 2010 and 2011
in 15 departments of Colombia, the land-
slides on roads caused several deaths and in-
juries while more than USD500 was invest-
ed on road restoration. However, real direct
and indirect economic losses are unquantifi-
able due to lack of information. In general,
the rainfall causes the majority of these
landslides, but the relationship between the
process of mass movements and rainfall is
still poorly understood and there are no
models to assess this problem in practice.
This work presents a simple statistical re-
lationship between landslides and accumu-
lated rainfall on slopes of roadways in resid-
ual soils of Altavista stock in Antioquia,
Colombia.
2 RAINFALL TRESHOLDS
The hydro-mechanical and hydraulic
conditions of the terrain and the state of sat-
uration of the soil are determinant on the
conditions of stability of slopes. The rain-
falls have a double effect: reduce the soil
This influence of the rainfall on slope stabil-
ity depends of the duration and intensity of
the rainfall.
Attempts have been made to develop
coupled models to simulate the effects of the
precipitation on the slope stability (Rahardjo
et al, 2001, Gitirana, 2005 Karam, 2005,
Godt et al. 2,008, Salciarini et al. 2,008 ,
Cascini et al., 2010, Conte & Troncone,
2012), these authors have used models that
consider the gradual advance of the wet
front and the reduction of suction and shear
strength of the soils. These methods are still
based on major simplifications and the input
parameters are difficult and expensive for
common cases. Consequently, these methods
are still recommended only for preliminary
assessments and for when there is a good
amount of measurements of the involved pa-
rameters (Conte & Troncone, 2012). Due to
the complexity of relationship rainfall-
infiltration-landslides, in general the evalua-
tion of the process of landslides triggered by
rainfall is still based on empirical methods.
In researches conducted in different parts
of the world it has been shown that the rela-
tionship between rainfall and landslides is
highly influenced by conditions of preceding
rainfall or rain accumulated on the ground
before the triggering event (Chen & Lee,
2004, Ko, 2005, Rahardjo et al., 2001, Ra-
hardjo et al., 2005, Rahimi et al, 2010, Bru-
netti et al., 2010, Zêzere et al., 2005, Jaiswal
and Van Westen, 2009 and 2010, Echeverri
& Valencia, 2004, Moreno et al., 2006, Aris-
tizabal et al, 2010, Hidalgo and Assis, 2011).
In general these studies have identified
thresholds with precedent rainfall of 15, 30,
60 and 90 days, and different durations of
triggering events as 1, 3 or 5 days. In some
studies it has been considered the rainfall in-
tensity in the establishment of thresholds.
In residual soils, studies have shown that
in slopes in well-drained soils (permeability
coefficient of saturated soil ks ≥ 10-4 m/s)
the stability is more affected by high intensi-
ty rainfall. In these cases the rainfall repre-
sents only a fraction of the permeability co-
efficient of the saturated soil. Furthermore,
they determined that poorly-drained slopes
(ks ≤ 10-6 m/s) are more affected by rainfall
in which the intensity equals ks, rainfalls of
high intensity but low duration have the
greatest influence on stability (Rahardjo et
al. 2,007, Rahimi et al. 2010)
The triggering effect of rainfall on land-
slides can be estimated using thresholds of
failure. These thresholds represent a rela-
tionship between the amount of rain accu-
mulated before and during the event of a
landslide that are established statistically.
There are several studies that use the accu-
mulated precipitation during the 3 days pre-
ceding the event, called antecedent rain and
rainfall accumulated during the 15 days pre-
ceding the earlier called precedent rainfall
(Echeverri & Valencia, 2004). These authors
studied the relationship between rainfall and
landslides in natural slopes of La Iguana riv-
er basin in the city of Medellin, Colombia, in
the period 1980-2001 with 40 records of
landslides and rainfall data of the meteoro-
logical station “San Cristobal” of the Medel-
lin public services company. For this zone
was determined a threshold for a hazard
landslide for precedent rainfall of 15 days
(R15) and a 3-day antecedent rainfall (R3)
and proposed a threshold that was exceeded
by 95% of data processed by them according
to the equation:
A  R3  60  0.55R15
Where: A is the hazard of landslide trig-
gered by rainfall, R3 is the 3 day antecedent
rainfall and R15 is the accumulated precipi-
tation of the 15 days preceding the R3.
Later, Moreno et al. (2006) studied the re-
lationship between rainfall and landslides in
the department of Antioquia, Colombia for
the time period 1974-1998. With a total of
283 landslides have determined a threshold
according to the equation:
R3  75  0.5R15
(2)
Where R3 is the 3 day antecedent rainfall
and R15 is the accumulated precipitation of
the 15 days preceding the R3.
There is some similarity between these
two equations, the fact results logical when
it is considered that La Iguana river basin is
located in the department of Antioquia. The
differences between the two equations are
associated with the differences in the periods
of time analyzed and geological and human
constraints. The human intervention may be
more substantial in the Iguana basin due to
its proximity to hard urbanized areas of the
city of Medellín.
The threshold proposed by Moreno et al
(2006), which is presented in equation 2,
was adopted by the early warning system of
the Aburrá Valley, Colombia-SIATA (Aris-
tizabal et al., 2010).
Also for the Aburrá Valley has been iden-
tified as the most important constraint for
the occurrence of landslides are the seasonal
rainfall, the long-term accumulative rainfall
of around 60 mm in 30, 160 mm in 60 days,
and 200 mm for 90 days (Aristizabal et al,
2011), the last two quantities are called ante-
cedent accumulative rainfall (LAA).
Jaiswal & Van Westen (2009 and 2010)
conducted research in which empirical
thresholds were used to estimate the proba-
bility of failure in slopes of roadways of
southern India. Using the Poisson distribu-
tion with the estimated rate  represents the
average number of events occurring in a unit
of time or space. The expression for the
Poisson distribution is:
x
n
P X  x    e 
(1) n 0 n!
(3)
Where x and n are positive integers and 
is a parameter that denotes the average num-
ber of events (X) occurring at time t, which (kPa)
can be estimated as: Effective cohesion (kPa) 7.3 7.6 103
Unsaturated friction angle 31 6.9 22
X
̂ 
(º)
effective friction angle (º) 37.1 4.8 13
t Liquid
(4) limit (%) 51.6 17.9 0.3
Plasticity limit (%)o 37.2 10.2 0.3
Hidalgo and Assis (2010 and 2011) com- Plasticity index (%) 14.4 12.7 0.9
bined these empirical relationships to assess
risk for landslides on a roadway with rainfall Since the beginning of operation of the
data recorded on days when there were land- road and for 4 years, the first section of the
slides and without considering the probabil- roadway had 168 landslides which are asso-
ity of exceedance of the threshold. The ciated with precipitation and the third had
thresholds obtained in these studies shows a 1291 landslides also due to rainfalls. In gen-
relationship between rainfall of 15 and 5 eral the landslides occurred when there were
days. large amount of accumulated precipitation as
seen in Figures 1 and 2 which show the data
of the climatological station of San Cristobal
3 RAINFALL TRESHOLDS and records of landslides respectively.
DETERMINATION
80
Total rainfall in a day (mm)

As a study case, it was considered of the 70

roadway named Aburrá Cauca Conection in 60
50
the department of Antioquia, Colombia. The 40
roadway is 39.4 km long, and is divided in 3 30
20
sections: the first is a two-track highway lo- 10
cated between the bridge over the river La 0
01/01/2006

01/01/2007

01/07/2007

01/01/2008

01/07/2008

01/01/2009

01/07/2009
01/07/2006

Iguana and the eastern portal of the tunnel

Fernando Gomez Martinez (abscissa km
4+000 to km 9+100); the second is the tun-
nel of 4.6 km in length; and the third is a Time
one-track roadway from the western portal
of the tunnel to the bridge over the Aurrá Figure 1. Accumulated daily rainfall by San Cristobal
river (abscissa km13+700 to km39+400). meteorological station (Hidalgo and Assis, 2011)
The area where the roadway is located is
characterized by a geology compounded by 6
5
igneous intrusive rocks of the Altavista stock
4
Landslides per day

in the first section and methamorfic and vol- 3

canic rocks in the second and third sections. 2
The intrussive rocks produce layers of resid- 1
ual soils with thicknesses up to 50 m, while 0
01/01/2006

01/07/2006

01/01/2007

01/07/2007

01/01/2008

01/01/2009

01/07/2009
01/07/2008

the metamorfic and volcanic rocks are cov-

ered by a thin layer of soil.
The more superficial ressidual soils from
the intrussive rocks are characterized by low Time
plasticity and low cohesion as may be seen
in Table 1. The results presented in this table Figure 2. Data of landslides occurrence in fisrts sec-
were determined with more than 30 determi- tion the roadway (Hidalgo y Assis, 2011)
nations in direct shear strength test (ASTM
D3080 - 11). Rainfall thresholds were established from
Table 1. Soils characteristics in the area daily accumulative rainfall antecedent and
Property Mean Standard CV precedent to the landslide, assessing the ac-
deviation (%) cumulative effects of rainfall by 15, 30 and
Dry unit weight (kN/m3) 11.3 1.2 11 60 days. In Figure 3 are shown the combina-
Wet unit weight (kN/m3) 15.9 1.4 9 tions for rainfall of 5 and 15 days are
Unsaturated cohesion 36.8 21.0 57
showed.
 For the purpose of this work the precipi-
tation or rainfall antecedent (PA) for the
short-term accumulated precipitation, or
precipitation in the days immediately to the
landslide and the precipitation of long term
(PP). PP is determined as the total rainfall
accumulated in the days before the PA. To
establish thresholds, for each day in which
there were landslides there were determined
antecedent rainfall accumulated of 1, 3 and 5
days prior to landslides and 15, 30 and 60
days preceding the former days, this means
that these were generally considered rainy
periods between 1 and 65 days, the data was
plot as illustrated in Figure 3. The proposed
thresholds were determined considering that
landslides arise when antecedent rainfall and
preceding rainfall reach their main value. It
was evaluated the different possible combi-
nations finding the thresholds defined by an
equation of the form:
𝑃𝐴𝑗 = 𝑎 − 𝑏𝑃𝑃𝑗𝑖
Where PAj is the accumulated precipita-
tion of j days antecedent to the landslides,
j=1, 3 and 5, PPi is the accumulated precipi-
tation of i days before i=15, 30 and 60 days.
160
Antecedent rainfall 5 days (mm)
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
0 50
Precedent rainfall 15 days (mm)
Figure 3. Combinations of total accumulated rainfall
of 5 and 15 days, for days with landslides.
In Tables 2 and 3 are presented the statis-
tics of each parameter considered in the
evaluation using different combinations with
Equation 5. The parameters used were the
antecedent precipitation of 1 day (PA1), an-
tecedent rain 3 days (PA3), 5-day antecedent
rainfall (PA5), accumulated precipitation of
the 15 days preceding the 1, 3 and 5 days
(PP1/15, PP3/15, PP5/15) accumulated precipita-
tion from the previous 30 days 1, 3 and 5
days (PP1/30, PP3/30, PP5/30) and cumulative
rainfall 60 days preceding the 1, 3 and 5
days (PP1/60, PP3/60, PP5/60). In Table 4 the
coefficients a and b are presented for each
combination, the number of days that the
threshold has been exceeded (N) and had
landslides and the probability of the thresh-
old being exceeded during these days (PE).
For rainstorms of short duration, in this
case events of 1 day of duration, is observed
that the values of the intercept of the thresh-
old is 14.02 mm and that the threshold has
been exceeded between 80.9 and 84.3% of
the days with landslides.
Table 2. Antecedent rainfall
San Cristobal station
PA5 PA3 PA1
Mean 46.5 32.4 14.0
Standard 32.4 25.3 13.9
deviation
CV 0.7 0.8 1.0
This implies that when the moisture is
(5) long-term accumulative rainfall 15, 30
high,
or 60 days with values between 78.1 mm
and 268.2 mm short rains, and low intensity
rainfalls in the order of 3.11 mm to 2.14 mm
can cause landslides. For preceding rainfall
of 30 days the threshold presents an exceed-
ance rate of at least 84.9, and exceedance
rates greater than 76% in the case of 15 and
y = -0,4259x + 46,505
60 days. In this work is proposed for short
duration storms a threshold based on precipi-
tation preceding 30 days with the following
equation:
𝑃𝐴1 = 14 − (0.1)𝑃𝑃30 (6)
100 150 200 250 Where PA1 is the accumulated precipita-
tion of the day before to the event and PP30
is the rainfall accumulated in the previous 30
days.
Regarding the antecedents rainfall, it can
be identified that the 5 day accumulated
rainfall presents a smaller dispersion around
the mean, given in terms of the coefficient of
variation is 0.70. However for 1 and 3 days
these values are 0.8 and 1.0.
The precedent rainfall also exhibit a simi-
lar trend and the dispersion decreases when
higher is the number of days considered. For
60 days the coefficients of variation obtained
are between 0.3 and 0.6, but for 15 and 30
days the coefficient of variation of 0.5-0.7
and 0.3-0.5 are obtained. Although the rain
accumulated for 60 days presents the mini-
mum variations in absolute terms, for practi- 𝑃𝐴5 = 46 − 0.19𝑃𝑃30 (8)
cal purposes the observed variations in the
order of 0.1 with respect to rainfall of 15 and Comparing the thresholds obtained in this
study with those proposed for the slopes in
30 days, resulting insignificant.
the study area, Equations 1 and 2, which
Table 3. Precedent rainfall. were developed with 3 days antecedent rain-
Station j i Mean Standard CV of fall and rainfall precedent 15 days, it can be
PP deviation PP observed that the threshold of equations 1
PP and 2 present values of the rainfall intercept
of 60 mm and 75 mm, considerably higher
San Cristo- 1 15 78.1 51.6 0.7
bal 30 164.9 90.2 0.5
than those obtained in this work for the same
60 268.2 157.1 0.6
combination that are of the order of 30 mm.
The intercept of the precedent precipitation
3 15 109.6 54.4 0.5
30 214.5 75.9 0.4
is equal in both cases the order of 110 mm.
60 401.8 122.5 0.3
This relationship, shown in Figure 4, indi-
cates a lower susceptibility of the slopes
5 15 109.2 54.5 0.5
30 239.2 79.6 0.3
evaluated in this study.
60 393 121.5 0.3 70

Antecedent rainfall 3 days (mm)

Treshold this work
60
Treshold equation 2
For rainstorms of longer duration, in this 50
PA3 = -0,5455PP15+ 60
case events of 5 hours duration is observed 40
that values of the intercept of the threshold
varies between 46.24 mm and 46.51 mm, 30
and that the threshold has been exceeded be- 20
tween 86.0 and 94.2% of the days that were
landslides. 10
PA3 = -0,2727PP15 + 30
Table 4. Parameters of failure thresholds. 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Station j i a b N PE Precedent rainfall 15 days (mm)
San Cristo- 1 15 14.02 0.179 98 80.9
bal 30 14.02 0.085 102 84.3
Figure 4. Comparison between the treshold for PA3
60 14.02 0.052 100 82.4
and PP15.
3 15 32.36 0.295 105 86.8
30 32.36 0.151 110 90.9 This significant difference is due to an-
60 32.36 0.081 110 90.9 thropogenic impact by roadway construction
5 15 46.51 0.425 106 87.6 since the landslides considered in this study
30 46.51 0.194 114 94.2 are all located along the roadway slopes ex-
60 46.51 0.118 112 92.6 cavation. The anthropic effect tends to in-
crease the likelihood of failure since it trans-
This implies that when the moisture is late the threshold of failure to smaller values
high, for long-term cumulative rainfall 15, of rainfall background with a differences in
30 or 60 days with values between 78.1 mm the order of 30 mm, therefore, natural slopes
and 401.8 mm and for five days landslides which have low susceptibility to landslides,
can be caused by accumulative rainfall of whenaffected by man activities can spend an
the order of 46 mm with an exceedance rate unstable situation critical.
of at least 87%. The thresholds for precedent This also explains why most landslides in
rainfall of 30 days, they have observed ex- Aburrá Valley, Colombia, occur in highly
ceedance rates greater than in the cases of 15 intervened areas, but areas with similar
and 60 days. Considering that accumulated topographical, geological and climatic fea-
rainfall for 15 and 30 days are simpler to ob- tures, but with less human intervention, have
tain, thresholds based on rainstorms of 5 less landslides. It may then be proposed a
days duration and previous precipitation of threshold that allows considering the an-
30 and 15 days are proposed: thropic effect on areas with high anthropo-
𝑃𝐴5 = 46 − 0.42𝑃𝑃15 genic
(7) interventions for this region of An-
tioquia, which is given as:
𝑃𝐴3 = 30 − 0.1𝑃𝑃15
4 CONCLUTION
The threshold for manmade slopes in re-
sidual soils when compared with thresholds
of natural slopes, shows that these are more
likely than this slopes fail.
The slopes in the residual soils of Altavis-
ta stock are likely to present landslides with
combinations of rainfall that have high prob-
ability of occurrence. Therefore, these
slopes should be designed for critical condi-
tions of saturation or ensure excellent drain-
age conditions.
Still, further research is required to un-
derstand the relationships between rainfall
and landslides in slopes, because still there
are cases where landslides has occurred with
rainfall below the threshold and many in-
stances in which when the threshold was ex-
ceeded there are not recorded landslides.
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