Forecasting post-earthquake rockfall activity

Abstract Important infrastructure such as highways or railways traverse unstable terrain in many mountainous and scenic parts of the world. Rockfalls landslides result frequent maintenance needs, system unreliability due to closures restrictions, safety hazards. Seismic activity significantly amplifies these negative economic community impacts by generating large rockfalls well weakening terrain. This paper interrogates a rich database repeat terrestrial lidar scans collected during Canterbury New Zealand Earthquake Sequence document geomorphic processes quantify rockfall rates through time. Changes rate (spatial distribution) failure depths (size) were observed based on Rockfall Activity Index (RAI) morphological classification. Forecasting models can be developed from relationships that utilized transportation agencies estimate increased needs for debris removal minimize road after seismic events.