Role of Probabilistic Methods in Sustainable Geotechnical Slope Stability Analysis

Sustainable stable slope for flood protection systems are of continuing interest, especially among developers of recommended practices and design standards for geotechnical engineers. The Factor-of-Safety, used in conventional deterministic slope stability analyses, is the ratio of the capacity (force, stress, deformation, displacement) of a structure to the demand imposed on or induced in the structure. Such index is clearly evaluated without regard to the degree of uncertainty involved in its calculation that is for instance particularly large for levee slope stability design. This paper advances reliability based slope stability approaches and strategies that address such uncertainties. Probabilistic methods have been successfully applied taking into account two primary categories of uncertainties: natural variabilities and modeling uncertainties.