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Mat foundations are most typically used in locations featuring weak soils such as soft clays and silts, particularly when building in demanding geotechnical conditions. Because of their poor engineering characteristics and significant difficulties associated with workability, these soils are often removed or avoided by excavating down to a specific depth. However, if thick layers are present, their removal becomes unpractical, costly, and creates inconvenience during construction. To overcome this issue, various reinforcement strategies can be adopted. In this study, the use of stone columns under mat foundations was investigated via numerical modeling. Two scenarios were compared: one in which stone columns were installed without any soil removal and another in which a layer of soft ground was removed and the foundation was installed without any ground treatment. Numerical results showed the clear beneficial effect of stone columns, which can significantly reduce settlements even in the presence of a thick deformable soil layer.

We release two datasets that track the enhanced landsliding induced by the Mw 7.9 2008 Wenchuan earthquake over a portion of the Longmen mountains, at the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau (Sichuan, China). The first dataset is a geo-referenced multi-temporal polygon-based inventory of pre- and coseismic landslides, post-seismic remobilisations of coseismic landslide debris, and post-seismic landslides (new failures). The inventory covers 462.5 km² in the earthquake's epicentral area, from 2005 to 2015. The second dataset records the debris flows that occurred from 2008 to 2017 in a larger area (~ 17,000 km²), together with information on their triggering rainfalls recorded by a network of rain gauges. For some well-monitored event, we provide detailed information on rainfall, discharge, flow depth and density. The datasets can be used to analyse, at various scales, the patterns of enhanced landsliding caused by the earthquake. They can be compared to inventories relative to past or new earthquakes or other triggers to reveal common or distinctive controlling factors. To our knowledge, no other inventories that track the temporal evolution of earthquake-induced mass wasting have been made freely available thus far. Our datasets are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1405490. We also encourage other researchers to share their datasets to facilitate research on post-seismic geological hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rock avalanche that destroyed the village of Xinmo in Sichuan, China, on June 24th, 2017, brought the issue of landslide risk and disaster chain management in highly seismic regions back into the spotlight. The long-term post-seismic behaviour of mountain slopes is complex and hardly predictable. Nevertheless, the integrated use of field monitoring, remote sensing and real-time predictive modelling can help to set-up effective early warning systems, provide timely alarms, optimize rescue operations and perform secondary hazard assessments. We believe that a comprehensive discussion on post-seismic slope stability and on its implications for policy makers can no longer be postponed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]