A multidisciplinary approach for the investigation of a rock spreading on an urban slope

Landslides are very complex processes controlled by multiple factors. The knowledge and characterization of these factors is essential for a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms and kinematics of the instabilities and for an efficient design of corrective measures. The aim of this work is to combine traditional geological and geotechnical techniques with geophysical, remote sensing and forensic techniques for obtaining a whole picture of an active lateral spreading affecting the Finestrat municipality in Alicante, SE Spain. Geomorphological, geotechnical and geophysical techniques (i.e. ground penetrating radar and refraction seismic) have provided essential information about the geometry, structure and petro-physical properties of the slope. A Terrestrial Laser Scanner was used for recognizing the most important sets of discontinuities affecting the rock mass and to evaluate the activity of the landslide slope. Complementarily, a forensic analysis of the building damage completed the available datasets, yielding very useful kinematic information of the landslide. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the stability of the rock slope has been performed considering both block toppling and block sliding models. Therefore, the multisource analysis performed in this work has allowed the identification and characterization of a complex lateral spreading, highlighting its effectiveness for a comprehensive understanding of this type of landslide. This work has been supported by the University of Alicante under the project GRE14-04, Generalitat Valenciana under the project GV/2011/044, by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport trough the project PRX14/00100, by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and EU FEDER funds under project TIN2014-55413-C2-2-P, by Swiss National Science Foundation (project numbers 138015 and 144040) and by the European Commission project MOMIT (Ref. no 777630). The second author would like to acknowledge the support received from the H2020 Program of the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF-2015-705215).