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Comparison of rockfall susceptibility assessment at local and regional scale: a case study in the north of Beijing (China)

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Abstract

This study shows a rockfall susceptibility assessment at local scale in north Beijing of China, including the identification of rockfall sources onsite by terrain and rock discontinuities analysis and run-out distance prediction by Rocfall™ simulation. Two types of rockfall were defined including one type on the cliffs with long inclined slopes and another type on the road slopes with low height. Two historical rockfall events were used to back-calibrating the parameters used for run-out distance simulation. Based on the work, rockfall susceptibility map at local scale was created in GIS, which was compared with the map obtained at regional scale (entire Huairou district scale). Due to the difference of approaches applied, procedure of assessment and types of source data acquired, the two resulting rockfall susceptibility maps are proved to be different. Still, both of them are useful and could be used at different level’s decision for rockfall prevention and mitigation. Different types of uncertainties exist in the study of rockfall susceptibility assessment. To reduce the uncertainties, studies on both approaches and techniques are suggested.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41402285, 41030750, 41272353, 41172269, 41372322 and No. 40502027), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No.2013M530722), National Technology Support Project (2008BAK50B04), and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Key Deployment Project (KZZD-EW-05-02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Engineering Geomechanics, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Xueliang Wang, Luqing Zhang, Javed Iqbal, Lihui Li & Zhifa Yang

  2. China Geological Survey of Nonferrous Metal Resource, Beijing, 100012, China

    Jixin Ding & Qingfeng Meng

  3. Department of Earth Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad, Pakistan

    Javed Iqbal

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  1. Xueliang Wang
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Correspondence to Xueliang Wang.

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Wang, X., Zhang, L., Ding, J. et al. Comparison of rockfall susceptibility assessment at local and regional scale: a case study in the north of Beijing (China). Environ Earth Sci 72, 4639–4652 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-014-3718-3

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