A new approach for landslide-induced damage assessment

The accurate evaluation of landslide-induced damage is a necessity for planning of proper and effective mitigation measures. It requires the implementation of field investigations to identify structural failures to more effectively trace landslide boundaries. Many methods have been proposed to classify landslide-induced damage of buildings. The existing methods demonstrate several advantages and drawbacks depending on the parameters considered, as lack of some important features and difficulties in applicability. A new classification approach of landslide-induced damage of facilities is proposed, which specifically focuses on assessing of damage degree and its relationship to the ground motion intensity and impact severity. The new approach is designed in two steps: a chart utilized during surveys to quantify cracks on structures and ground surface; an a posteriori ranking of structures performed using a cell-grid matrix. Furthermore, a damage recording scheme useful for field surveying is proposed. This approach considers several parameters derived from different existing methodologies by smoothing out drawbacks and homogenizing the considered features. The resulting approach provides a new procedure of landslide-induced damage assessment adoptable in case of private dwellings, as it does not require internal accessibility, and it is exploitable for different landslide events and for different kinds of structures and facilities.