TerraMosaic Daily Digest: Apr 1, 2026
Daily Summary
This April 1, 2026 digest distills 57 selected papers from 866 analyzed records. The strongest papers link slope instability to measurable internal structure, rather than to trigger description alone. The leading contributions reconstruct cascade cryosphere-flood failure in the Swiss Alps, resolve progressive reactivation and deepening in ancient landslides, quantify strain localization from multi-temporal lidar, and translate these diagnostics into mechanisms of escalation, runout, and downstream consequence.
A second strand broadens the scope from individual slopes to infrastructure-scale risk. Rockburst, liquefaction, retaining-wall performance, permafrost degradation, flood-road disruption, and granular flood-risk workflows are increasingly framed as threshold-sensitive systems whose value lies in decision support rather than in stand-alone classification. Across the set, the most useful studies are those that convert deformation state, cascade initiation, and material behavior into operationally interpretable signals.
Key Trends
The strongest papers identify the measurable internal state that separates background deformation from true cascade initiation, then connect that state to downstream consequence and action.
- Slope failure is being treated as a state variable problem: the leading landslide studies quantify deformation state, rainfall history, strain localization, and failure geometry directly, sharpening both mechanism and forecast.
- Cascade hazards are becoming a central organizing framework: landslide dams, moraine-failure GLOFs, cloudburst chains, and flood-road disruptions are increasingly analyzed as linked systems whose turning points can be reconstructed quantitatively.
- Infrastructure geotechnics is moving toward threshold-aware decision metrics: rockburst, liquefaction, retaining-wall performance, wedge failure, and thaw settlement are increasingly expressed as warning stresses, serviceability classes, or operational design quantities.
- Flood and cryosphere research is becoming more spatially explicit and action-oriented: parcel-scale exposure, H3-based pluvial screening, transboundary susceptibility, thermokarst embankments, and glacial-lake hazard studies all now feed more directly into intervention priorities.
Selected Papers
This digest features 57 selected papers from 866 papers analyzed.
1. Climate warming–driven multi-factor coupling triggering the Blatten ice-rock avalanche in the Swiss Alps
Core Problem: Glacier-related slope failures are increasingly compound, but the trigger chain linking rock structure, glacier dynamics, weather forcing, and downstream impacts remains poorly resolved.
Key Innovation: Reconstructs the 2025 Blatten collapse with 3D topography, UAV mapping, remote sensing, meteorology, and seismic evidence to show a domino-style hazard chain in which cryosphere warming, freeze-thaw damage, and meltwater-enhanced mobility jointly controlled failure and runout.
2. Deformation characteristics and mechanism of reactivation for stepwise-deepening landslides: a case study of the Hongzhai Landslide in Guizhou Province, China
Core Problem: Understanding the complex deformation characteristics and reactivation mechanisms of ancient landslides, particularly those exhibiting stepwise-deepening slip surfaces and multiple reactivation events.
Key Innovation: A detailed case study of the Hongzhai landslide, combining field surveys, historical analysis, InSAR-based surface deformation monitoring, and MatDEM numerical simulations to reveal its multi-phase reactivation history, progressive slip zone deepening, and the combined effects of geological factors, providing valuable insights for similar deep-seated landslides.
3. Quantifying landslide strain localization phenomena using tensor analysis of multi-temporal lidar data
Core Problem: A fundamental understanding of landslide evolution requires characterizing how deformation localizes within the sliding mass, as traditional analysis often assumes uniform movement.
Key Innovation: Presents a methodology using strain tensor analysis applied to high-resolution displacement fields from multi-temporal UAV-lidar and SfM data to quantify intricate patterns of surface deformation. It computes divergence, gradient, and curl fields to reveal unique kinematic signatures and strain localization behavior for translational and rotational landslides, advancing the mechanistic understanding of slope instability.
4. TRIGRSMap: a QGIS plugin for spatio-temporal rainfall-induced landslide susceptibility mapping
Core Problem: The need for enhanced spatial and temporal capabilities in assessing rainfall-induced landslide susceptibility, and the limitations of traditional homogeneous soil parameter assumptions.
Key Innovation: Introduces TRIGRSMap, a novel QGIS plugin that integrates the TRIGRS model with enhanced spatio-temporal capabilities. It demonstrates improved accuracy (40% higher) by using heterogeneous soil parameters and incorporating rainfall variability, providing a more realistic representation of landslide susceptibility zones.
5. Catastrophic rainfall-induced landslides and flash floods in the Darjeeling Himalaya, Eastern India: Insights from a post-monsoonal hydro-geomorphic extreme event
Core Problem: The October 2025 Darjeeling disaster demands a coupled explanation of how extreme post-monsoonal rainfall, saturated hillslopes, and human-modified drainage together produced simultaneous landslides and flash floods.
Key Innovation: Field observations and event reconstruction document how more than 300 mm of rain, antecedent saturation, blocked mountain drainage, and fluvial undercutting combined to transform widespread slope failures into a compound landslide-flash-flood disaster across the Darjeeling Himalaya.
6. Three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning–based identification of rock mass discontinuities for rockfall modeling using 3D discontinuous deformation analysis
Core Problem: Accurately identifying rock mass discontinuities and integrating this data into realistic 3D rockfall modeling to enhance reliability of simulations for hazard assessment.
Key Innovation: Presents an integrated framework combining 3D laser scanning for efficient and accurate identification of rock mass discontinuities with 3D Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (DDA) for quantitative rockfall modeling, demonstrated on a steep rock slope.
7. Physics-informed synergy regional co-seismic landslide size prediction: A novel data-driven approach for improved reliability and interpretability
Core Problem: Purely data-driven landslide size models rely too heavily on landscape covariates and remain weak in physical interpretability.
Key Innovation: Introduced a physics-informed framework that embeds slope morphology and energy-line-based kinetic constraints into machine learning for more reliable co-seismic landslide size prediction.
8. Pre-failure dynamic analysis of the Fundão tailings dam using the PM4Sand liquefaction model
Core Problem: Determining the role of seismic events in the catastrophic failure of the Fundão tailings dam.
Key Innovation: Used advanced constitutive models (NorSand/PM4Sand) to prove that seismic events were secondary triggers, with static conditions driving the failure.
9. Insights into evolution of rockfalls on a high-steep slope using UAV photogrammetry and cone complementary-based 3D-DDA
Core Problem: Accurately capturing nonlinear contact interactions in rockfall simulations and constructing precise numerical models of complex slope terrains are challenging for predicting rockfall evolution and impact zones.
Key Innovation: Reformulation of 3D-DDA using cone complementary theory for better nonlinear contact interaction capture, combined with UAV photogrammetry for accurate terrain modeling, enabling enhanced prediction of rockfall trajectories, impact zones, and deposition sites on high-steep slopes.
10. Detection of slow-moving landslides using satellite imagery at the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve
Core Problem: Slow-moving landslides in remote glaciated terrain are hard to detect before they transition into faster and more hazardous slope failures.
Key Innovation: This study builds an automated Landsat-based feature-tracking workflow that generates velocity maps and displacement time series, identifying 21 unstable slopes in Glacier Bay, including 14 previously unknown landslides.
11. Triggering mechanisms and dynamics of an off-season rainfall-induced rock avalanche in the Wumeng Mountains, China
Core Problem: Understanding the triggering mechanisms and dynamics of rock avalanches, especially those occurring during unusual conditions like the dry season, is crucial for hazard assessment and mitigation in mountainous regions.
Key Innovation: The study combines field investigations, UAV photogrammetry, laboratory testing, and DEM simulations to analyze a specific rock avalanche event, providing quantitative insights into the roles of lithology, topography, and rainfall in avalanche dynamics. The DEM simulations reconstruct the dynamic evolution of the event, indicating peak velocities and distinct acceleration-deceleration phases.
12. Debris flow vulnerability assessment in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau using integrated UAV-SLAM 3D reconstruction: Shuihaizigou Gully case study
Core Problem: Quantifying the vulnerability of buildings to debris flow events, specifically establishing the relationship between debris flow parameters (flow depth, velocity, impact pressure) and building damage in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau.
Key Innovation: Integration of UAV-SLAM 3D reconstruction to create high-precision models of damaged buildings, enabling the establishment of a building damage database and derivation of vulnerability curves for debris flows, and a comparative analysis of Torrential Fan models to improve spatial vulnerability assessment accuracy.
13. Investigating the relationship between seismic and infrasonic source mechanisms in debris flows
Core Problem: The radiation processes of seismic waves and infrasound from debris flows, and their interrelationship, are still poorly understood.
Key Innovation: This study analyzes seismic and infrasonic signals from a debris-flow event, confirming independent but near-field correlated processes. It suggests infrasonic source mechanisms develop effectively above a discharge threshold and at topographic steps, estimates flow velocity using infrasound, and links seismic radiation to sediment discharge variations, providing constraints on source mechanisms.
14. An experimental investigation of the interaction between near-critical debris flows and flexible barriers: Focus on successive surges and cable failure
Core Problem: Flexible-barrier design is still poorly constrained for debris flows arriving as multiple surges and for partial cable failure scenarios.
Key Innovation: Real-scale-similitude flume tests show that multi-surge events load barriers differently from single-surge events of equal cumulative mass and clarify when partial barrier failure does, and does not, release substantial debris.
15. Mechanisms of rainfall-induced shallow landslides regulated by hydrological subsurface structures: Cases in granite and granodiorite areas in Northern Abukuma Mountains, Japan
Core Problem: Rainfall thresholds for shallow landslides cannot be generalized without resolving how regolith and bedrock architecture route subsurface water on granitoid hillslopes.
Key Innovation: Combines field characterization and slope hydrology modeling to distinguish two failure pathways, showing saturation-from-below on granite slopes and perched-groundwater failure on granodiorite slopes, with different storm-duration controls.
16. Instability evolutionary characteristic of colluvial landslide based on the 3D deformation field and curvature Shannon entropy in physical model test
Core Problem: Instability transitions in colluvial landslides remain difficult to diagnose quantitatively from evolving full-field deformation.
Key Innovation: Curvature-Shannon-entropy analysis of 3D deformation fields in physical models separates instability stages and links curvature evolution to velocity and internal stress redistribution.
17. Impact of flow-like landslide on protection barrier: Centrifuge Tests and MPM modelling
Core Problem: Barrier design for flow-like landslides still lacks physically grounded constraints on impact regime, energy transfer, and the role of internal hydraulic conductivity.
Key Innovation: Beam-centrifuge tests and calibrated MPM simulations quantify barrier displacement, impact kinematics, and conductivity-dependent transitions between bore, standing-jump, and airborne-jet interaction modes.
18. Geophysics-based landslide zonation explains spatial variability in tree-ring growth disturbances
Core Problem: Complex landslides are internally heterogeneous, making it difficult to interpret tree-ring based chronologies of slope activity.
Key Innovation: Integration of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) to delineate mechanically distinct zones within a landslide, which significantly improves the interpretation of dendrogeomorphic growth disturbances.
19. A depth-averaged method modeling three-dimensional submarine landslides caused by earthquakes
Core Problem: Conventional methods for modeling earthquake-triggered submarine landslides simplify seismic loading and neglect strain-softening behavior of marine sediments, limiting their ability to reproduce the entire landslide process.
Key Innovation: Development of a new depth-averaged method that incorporates 3D seismic accelerations and curvature effects, capturing shear band propagation from initiation to post-failure runout, offering a computationally efficient tool for assessing large-scale submarine slides.
20. Dynamic analysis of moraine landslide–induced glacial lake outburst flood event
Core Problem: Cascading GLOFs triggered by slope failures remain difficult to reconstruct stage by stage, leaving the amplification mechanisms between impact wave, dam breach, and downstream flooding poorly constrained.
Key Innovation: Survey-constrained numerical reconstruction of the 2020 Jinwuco event resolves landslide entry, impulse-wave propagation, dam breach, backwater formation, and long-runout flood evolution, identifying valley-drop-driven momentum amplification as the key transition in the cascade.
21. Topographic profile and morphology analysis of shallow landslides inside and outside of forests with a semi-automatic mapping approach and bi-temporal airborne laser scanning data
Core Problem: Landslide inventories that miss failures beneath forest canopies distort both the frequency and morphology of shallow landslides.
Key Innovation: A bi-temporal ALS workflow shows that forested scars tend to be deeper, thicker, and steeper than those outside forests, linking canopy structure directly to mapped landslide characteristics.
22. Morphological and dynamic characteristics of abrasion on drainage structures in response to debris flow
Core Problem: Damage to drainage channels and check dams under repeated debris-flow abrasion lacks a clear process-based classification and design framework.
Key Innovation: Field investigations show that flow velocity, watershed cutting degree, and fine-particle content control abrasion intensity, enabling more targeted debris-flow structure design and repair.
23. High-resolution (30 m) mapping of permafrost distribution in the Genhe River Basin, Greater Khingan Mountains, Northeast China
Core Problem: Most existing permafrost distribution studies provide coarse spatial resolution mappings (typically 1 km or more), failing to capture local-scale heterogeneity of permafrost distribution in permafrost boundary regions.
Key Innovation: Employed 298 ground-truth samples to evaluate six machine learning algorithms (with Random Forest achieving the best performance) for simulating permafrost distribution, producing a high-resolution (30 m) permafrost map, and identifying key environmental drivers (slope, TWI, DTR, NDWI, LST) through SHAP analysis.
24. How well can we measure peak discharge and volume? Instantaneous 3D LiDAR measurements of multiple debris flows at three locations along a channel
Core Problem: Peak discharge and event volume of debris flows are still commonly biased because traditional methods cannot resolve instantaneous depth-velocity structure or exclude deposited material.
Key Innovation: High-resolution 3D LiDAR velocity and depth fields from Illgraben are used to derive a column-wise discharge method that sharply improves volume and peak-flow estimates and reveals event-type-specific biases in conventional calculations.
25. Development and hypermobility of the Basu rock avalanche in the Nu River ophiolitic mélange, southeastern Tibetan Plateau
Core Problem: The mechanisms that allow giant ophiolitic-melange rock avalanches to achieve extreme mobility and long runout remain insufficiently constrained.
Key Innovation: Field evidence, dating, experiments, and numerical simulation identify seismic triggering and fine serpentine powder lubrication along the slip zone as key controls on the Basu avalanche's hypermobility.
26. Gravelly soil liquefaction prediction via transfer learning from sandy soil using Bayesian networks
Core Problem: Earthquake-induced liquefaction of gravelly soils threatens infrastructure stability, but prediction accuracy is severely constrained by data scarcity.
Key Innovation: A multisource Bayesian network transfer learning (MS-BNTL) method using sandy soil data as the source domain and gravelly soil data as the target domain is proposed. The method identifies and transfers similar seismic causal subnetworks between domains while avoiding negative transfer from mismatched knowledge.
27. Mitigating thermokarst lake impacts on permafrost embankments: Field monitoring and modeling of crushed-rock filling
Core Problem: Thermokarst lakes can drive lateral thermal erosion and thaw settlement that progressively destabilize transport embankments in warming permafrost terrain.
Key Innovation: Joint field monitoring and coupled heat-transfer simulation show that crushed-rock filling can sharply cool the lake-facing embankment, reduce thaw depth, and cut long-term settlement by more than half, offering a practical low-cost adaptation strategy.
28. Thermal stability analysis of permafrost subgrade based on deep learning and numerical simulation
Core Problem: Permafrost degradation threatens transport corridors, but thermal-field prediction under complex boundary conditions remains computationally difficult.
Key Innovation: A Bayesian-optimized temporal transformer trained against numerical simulations improves prediction of permafrost subgrade thermal evolution on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
29. Inter-particle friction effects on submarine landslide dynamics: LBM-DEM simulations of low-aspect-ratio submerged granular collapse
Core Problem: Particle-scale controls on the runout and force evolution of submarine landslides are still poorly quantified.
Key Innovation: Coupled LBM-DEM simulations show that runout decreases exponentially with inter-particle friction, clarify the switch between viscous and friction-dominated behavior, and connect densimetric Froude number to long runout.
30. Seismic performance of four adjacent buildings affected by severe liquefaction in İskenderun during the 2023 M7.8 Pazarcık earthquake
Core Problem: The coupled soil-structure mechanism behind clustered building settlement on liquefied reclaimed ground required physically consistent back-analysis.
Key Innovation: Calibrated nonlinear effective-stress site and structural models reproduce the observed punching settlement during the 2023 Pazarcik earthquake.
31. Bridging the Data Gap: An Enhanced Global Inventory for Statistical Characterization and Hazard Assessment of Landslide Dams
Core Problem: Global landslide-dam inventories still lack the breach and hydrodynamic parameters needed for quantitative dam-failure modeling and downstream hazard assessment.
Key Innovation: This study assembles 902 vetted landslide-dam cases with transient breach metrics and event-level data-quality flags, turning a static catalogue into a dataset usable for susceptibility mapping and physically based breach simulation.
32. Probabilistic hazard analysis of earthquake-induced landslides considering multiple ground motion intensity measures
Core Problem: Probabilistic landslide-displacement hazard analysis still struggles to incorporate multiple correlated ground-motion intensity measures without the full complexity of vector probabilistic seismic hazard analysis.
Key Innovation: The paper integrates vector PSHA with Fourier-spectrum-based intensity measures to derive displacement hazard curves that preserve cross-measure consistency and reduce prediction variability for seismically triggered slope failures.
33. Comprehensive assessment of Himalayan glacial lakes concerning their distribution, dynamics, and hazard potential
Core Problem: Himalayan GLOF planning still lacks basin-wide prioritization that jointly considers lake growth, critical-lake density, probable flood volume, and downstream exposure.
Key Innovation: The paper integrates regional glacial-lake inventories, critical-lake overlays, potential flood volume, and exposed infrastructure to produce a Himalayan-scale hazard map that identifies priority basins for field investigation and hydrodynamic modelling.
34. An Improved LightGBM model with ADASYN and Whale Optimization Algorithm for Rockburst Intelligent Prediction
Core Problem: Rockburst prediction suffers from class imbalance and unstable performance in data-driven warning models.
Key Innovation: ADASYN balancing combined with WOA-LightGBM improves prediction accuracy across benchmark and engineering datasets, strengthening intelligent rockburst risk assessment.
35. Characteristics and formation mechanism of axial chain rockbursts in deep-buried tunnels traversed by stiff rock vein through gneiss strata
Core Problem: The origin of axial chain rockbursts, prolonged and repetitive failures in deep tunnels, remains poorly understood.
Key Innovation: Field surveys, microseismic monitoring, and true-triaxial tests reveal a vein-controlled three-stage incubation and a stress-energy mechanism for chain bursting.
36. Cooling characteristics of the dual-layer ventilation slope and underlying permafrost response process of the railbed
Core Problem: Railbed protection in warming permafrost terrain requires more effective active cooling strategies than current crushed-rock or shading approaches provide.
Key Innovation: Two-year field monitoring and simulation show that a dual-layer ventilation slope sharply strengthens convective cooling, lowers slope temperature, and can preserve underlying permafrost for decades.
37. Failure characteristics and development mechanism of time-delayed rockburst in a tunnel excavated via the drilling and blasting method: A case study
Core Problem: Time-delayed rockburst remains difficult to anticipate because triggering depends on cumulative stress evolution rather than immediate excavation response.
Key Innovation: Field investigation, triaxial testing, simulation, and microseismic monitoring are combined to show how valley stress, time-dependent strength loss, and repeated blasting-seismic disturbance converged to trigger an intense delayed rockburst.
38. True triaxial experimental reproduction and triggering mechanism of arch-bottom rockburst in deep-buried circular tunnels
Core Problem: Arch-bottom rockburst is increasingly reported in deep circular tunnels, but its triggering mechanism is still poorly resolved because conventional triaxial setups cannot reproduce the relevant stress path.
Key Innovation: A visualization-enabled true-triaxial apparatus successfully reproduces delayed arch-bottom rockburst and shows that additional maximum horizontal stress elevation is the dominant trigger for V-shaped pit formation.
39. Deformation and failure mechanisms of deep fractured karst slopes induced by underground mining
Core Problem: Mining-driven instability in fractured karst slopes is still poorly resolved where deep karst structures and underground excavation interact dynamically.
Key Innovation: Field evidence and discrete-element modelling reveal a three-stage failure chain controlled by deep karst fractures, dynamic stress-arch migration, and progressive unlocking of cantilever-like rock structures.
40. Dynamic failure mechanism of a high-steep rock mass slope containing a weak interlayer at the tunnel portal and damage evolution of lining subjected to strong earthquakes
Core Problem: Tunnel portals in steep mountains remain highly vulnerable during earthquakes because weak interlayers can couple slope collapse with lining damage in ways conventional seismic design does not capture.
Key Innovation: Shaking-table tests, numerical simulation, and theoretical analysis show that weak-interlayer activation drives rapid sliding at the portal and concentrates lining damage at the crown and invert under strong seismic loading.
41. Ground response analysis and liquefaction assessment of subsea soils at an offshore platform site
Core Problem: Offshore design needs better discrimination between classical liquefaction and cyclic softening in submarine soils under different earthquake return periods.
Key Innovation: Site-specific geotechnical data and nonlinear response analysis show that shallow cyclic softening, rather than widespread liquefaction, may control the governing seismic hazard.
42. Property-Level Flood Risk Assessment Using AI-Enabled Street-View Lowest Floor Elevation Extraction and ML Imputation Across Texas
Core Problem: Regional flood assessments rarely resolve structure-specific lowest-floor elevations, limiting their ability to estimate interior inundation and parcel-scale loss.
Key Innovation: The paper combines street-view AI extraction, performance-gated elevation imputation, inundation surfaces, and depth-damage functions to build a scalable workflow for property-level flood-loss estimation across Texas.
43. Comprehensive multi-hazard risk assessment in data-scarce regions – a study focused on Burundi
Core Problem: Data-scarce countries need comparable national risk metrics across multiple hazards, but sparse and heterogeneous inputs often prevent harmonized assessment.
Key Innovation: This study integrates climatology, exposure, socioeconomic vulnerability, and a national shallow-landslide susceptibility model into commune- and province-scale annual-average-loss estimates for Burundi.
44. Integrating SMART principles in flood early warning system design in the Himalayas
Core Problem: Mountain flood-warning systems often rely on coarse secondary datasets that miss watershed-scale rainfall heterogeneity and fail to match local operational needs.
Key Innovation: A low-cost, community-centered monitoring network reveals storm movement and sub-basin rainfall contrasts across the Bindal watershed, providing a practical empirical basis for SMART urban flood early-warning design in the Himalayas.
45. Urban flood risk projection under climate change: an approach based on explainable and optimized ensemble learning
Core Problem: Forward-looking urban flood-risk projection remains difficult because climate, exposure, and built-form variables interact nonlinearly across emissions and development scenarios.
Key Innovation: Using Beijing as a case, the study builds an interpretable stacking ensemble under coupled RCP-SSP pathways to map the future expansion of moderate-to-high flood-risk zones and quantify nonlinear driver thresholds.
46. Ensemble machine learning and deep learning framework for flood susceptibility mapping in the transboundary Rapti River Basin
Core Problem: Flood-susceptibility mapping in transboundary basins is undermined by heterogeneous terrain, land use, and cross-border data discontinuities.
Key Innovation: The study combines Random Forest, XGBoost, and LSTM models with SHAP interpretation and spatially blocked validation to produce a reproducible, open-data flood-susceptibility workflow for the Indo-Nepal Rapti basin.
47. Riverbank erosion in the Ganges reach of Bangladesh: influence of geotechnical factors and seasonal water level fluctuations
Core Problem: Large alluvial-river banks remain difficult to stabilize because geotechnical strength and seasonal river-groundwater level shifts are rarely evaluated together.
Key Innovation: This study combines multi-temporal satellite analysis, field geotechnics, and slope-stability simulations to show how toe erosion in sandy layers and water-level gradients trigger cantilever-style Ganges bank failures.
48. Reinforced behaviors of anchored slopes with weak layer: insights into effect of weak layer and anchorage angle
Core Problem: Anchor design for slopes containing weak layers remains uncertain because weak-layer proportion and anchorage angle jointly control deformation localization and cracking.
Key Innovation: Physical modelling with multi-field monitoring quantifies how weak layers intensify anchor strain and shows that a 25 degree anchorage angle most effectively reduces strain concentration and landslide cracking.
49. Effects of Pore Water Pressure on the Stability of Granular Slopes Under Simulated Rainfall
Core Problem: Rainfall-driven failures in granular slopes are still hard to predict because rainfall intensity, clay migration, and transient pore-water pressure interact nonlinearly during saturation.
Key Innovation: Physical model experiments reveal a three-stage failure sequence and show how higher rainfall intensity and greater clay content amplify pore-pressure buildup, settlement, and landslide volume under short-duration intense rain.
50. Collapse of underground cavities: initiated by cyclic pipeline leakage and triggered by rainfall infiltration
Core Problem: Urban cavity collapse from buried-pipeline leakage remains poorly understood, especially the stabilizing and destabilizing role of capillary forces before rainfall arrives.
Key Innovation: Coupled physical tests and FDM-DEM simulations show that cyclic leakage builds a capillary-stabilized soil arch, while subsequent rainfall infiltration destroys that capillary support and triggers sudden cavity collapse.
51. System probability analysis approach for the stability of rock slopes subjected to seismic excitation
Core Problem: Conventional seismic slope assessments often evaluate only one potential failure surface at a time, missing the integrated instability probability across multiple sliding modes.
Key Innovation: This study derives an analytical system-probability framework for multi-plane rock-slope failure under seismic loading, showing how acceleration amplification and wave speed reshape instability probability.
52. Three-dimensional numerical analysis of the stability of slopes reinforced by realistic root system architecture
Core Problem: Vegetation reinforcement is often represented as a simple cohesion increment, which obscures how realistic root geometry and evolving root-soil load transfer actually stabilize slopes.
Key Innovation: A 3D finite-element framework with realistic vetiver root architecture shows when root buckling, planting position, and spacing strengthen or overstate the stability of rooted slopes.
53. Upper bound limit analysis of pile-reinforced soil slopes before and after rainfall conditions
Core Problem: Pile-reinforced slopes can fail differently before and after rainfall, but upper-bound analyses rarely represent sliding-surface discontinuity at the pile location and wetting-front-controlled failure modes together.
Key Innovation: The paper develops rainfall-aware upper-bound failure mechanisms and software for pile-reinforced slopes, showing how pile geometry and rainfall intensity reshape stability before and after wetting.
54. Scalable pluvial flood risk assessment: A data-driven framework integrating machine learning (ML) and discrete global grid systems (DGGS H3)
Core Problem: Building-scale pluvial susceptibility products are difficult to communicate and maintain consistently across neighborhood, city, and regional planning scales.
Key Innovation: The paper aggregates a machine-learning building-level pluvial flood index into multi-resolution H3 hexagonal grids, creating an updateable flood-screening framework while quantifying the hotspot-smoothing tradeoff across scales.
55. Lessons learned from the modeling of nature-based solutions for urban flood mitigation in Ottawa, Canada
Core Problem: Nature-based urban flood interventions are often evaluated with routing schemes that obscure where and how their mitigation benefits actually emerge.
Key Innovation: Calibrated PCSWMM experiments show how lot-scale versus topographic delineation changes the estimated benefit of bioretention cells, clarifying where distributed nature-based solutions most effectively reduce flood volume, peak flow, and inundation extent.
56. Subdomain sampling method for efficient reliability analysis of pile-reinforced slopes involving copula-based cross-correlated random fields
Core Problem: Reliability analysis of pile-reinforced slopes remains computationally expensive when soil cohesion and friction angle are represented as non-Gaussian cross-correlated random fields.
Key Innovation: The paper introduces a subdomain sampling strategy that preserves copula-based dependence structure while reducing factor-of-safety simulations by about 90 percent for pile-reinforced slope reliability analysis.
57. Pile-soil arching mechanism acting on bridge piles in a soil slope
Core Problem: Bridge piles embedded in soil slopes are influenced by inclined pile-soil arching, yet arching depth, force transfer, and applicability limits remain poorly defined.
Key Innovation: This study derives an inclined pile-soil arching model with explicit arching-depth limits and validates how interface strength, slope angle, and pile geometry govern lateral force redistribution in sloping ground.