Caracterización de la tipología y cinemática del deslizamiento de la urbanización Trigales Altos, Cuenca a partir de fotografías aéreas, estación total, escáner láser terrestre y ensayos geotécnicos del suelo

Abstract

Landslides cause severe economic and social damage in inhabited areas around the world, which is why landslide analysis has gained importance in time. Technological improvements have allowed to develop software powerful enough to perform complex stability analyses in milliseconds, like Bishop and Felenius methods for estimating the Safety Factor (SF) for a hillside or battered terrain. This software is often paired with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to increase information for high precision studies. The present research took place at the northeast of Cuenca, Ecuador, on a housing estate called “Trigales Altos”, and used Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) to collect data to generate a tridimensional point model in three different moments. This allowed to analyze the kinetics of slide affecting the housing estate. Additionally, characterizations of the soil, both physical and mechanical, showed a terrain composed by highly expansive clay, which also affect households located over the landslide. The tridimensional point cloud analysis revealed that the maximum vertical displacement of the slide was 30 cm, produced in the middle, down the hillside, during seven months, between the first and the last TLS survey. Based on the 2010 ortophoto and data from the 2000 municipal cadaster, the displacement in this area would reach 3 m in 17 years. The safety factor (SF) under normal humidity conditions is 0,6 and considering ground acceleration, the SF is 0,5. The study concludes showing the instability of the hillside and the active slide, with edifications about to collapse.