Monitoring and Prediction of Coastal Rockfall Hazard: An Application of RocSlope3 in Newcastle (Australia)

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_12How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Rockfall; Change detection; Geostructural mapping; 3D kinematic analysis; Rocscience

Abstract

Rock mass instabilities – including rockfalls, wedge sliding failures and block topples – affecting sub-vertical rock cliffs in popular scenic coastal areas, significantly impact public safety and the financial viability of nearby assets. To effectively manage rockfall hazard along coastlines, it is essential to clearly understand the frequency and intensity of events impacting areas of interest. Because these rock slope instabilities are primarily controlled by the interaction of the coastal environment with pre-existing geostructural features, such as joints and bedding planes, detailed geostructural mapping and subsequent stability analyses provide indications of expected rockfall activity, complimenting existing rockfall monitoring techniques. This paper presents an application of RocSlope3 to a frequently visited coastal cliff in Newcastle, Australia, and directly compares the resulting expected rockfall activity to the observed events obtained via change detection analyses. Regular photogrammetric drone surveys yielded a series of high-resolution three-dimensional models of the site, facilitating extensive geostructural mapping of the cliff face and the identification of potentially unstable blocks. Characteristics of the predicted detachments from RocSlope3 – including volume and location – were compared with those of actual rockfall events identified via change detection analyses performed on the time series of rock slope models, further assessing the expected hazard.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Abigail Watman
AU  - Davide Ettore Guccione
AU  - Anna Giacomini
AU  - Klaus Thoeni
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/07
TI  - Monitoring and Prediction of Coastal Rockfall Hazard: An Application of RocSlope3 in Newcastle (Australia)
BT  - Proceedings of the Rocscience International Conference 2025 (RIC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 123
EP  - 130
SN  - 2589-4943
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_12
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-900-1_12
ID  - Watman2025
ER  -