This paper presents a short history of the appraisal of laser scanner technologies in geosciences used for imaging relief by high-resolution digital elevation models (HRDEMs) or 3D models. A general overview of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) techniques applied to landslides is given, followed by a review of different applications of LIDAR for landslide, rockfall and debris-flow. These applications are classified as: (1) Detection and characterization of mass movements; (2) Hazard assessment and susceptibility mapping; (3) Modelling; (4) Monitoring. This review emphasizes how LIDARderived HRDEMs can be used to investigate any type of landslides. It is clear that such HRDEMs are not yet a common tool for landslides investigations, but this technique has opened new domains of applications that still have to be developed.

Abstract. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is one of the most promising surveying techniques for rockslope characterization and monitoring. Landslide and rockfall movements can be detected by means of comparison of sequential scans. One of the most pressing challenges of natural hazards is combined temporal and spatial prediction of rockfall. An outdoor experiment was performed to ascertain whether the TLS instrumental error is small enough to enable detection of precursory displacements of millimetric magnitude. This consists of a known displacement of three objects relative to a stable surface. Results show that millimetric changes cannot be detected by the analysis of the unprocessed datasets. Displacement measurement are improved considerably by applying Nearest Neighbour (NN) averaging, which reduces the error (1σ ) up to a factor of 6. This technique was applied to displacements prior to the April 2007 rockfall event at Castellfollit de la Roca, Spain. The maximum precursory displacement measured was 45 mm, approximately 2.5 times the standard deviation of the model comparison, hampering the distinction between actual displacement and instrumental error using conventional methodologies. Encouragingly, the precursory displacement was clearly detected by applying the NN averaging method. These results show that millimetric displacements prior to failure can be detected using TLS.

This manuscript presents a review on the application of a remote sensing technique (terrestrial laser scanning, TLS) to a well-known topic (rock slope characterization and monitoring). Although the number of publications on the use of TLS in rock slope studies has rapidly increased in the last 5-10 years, little effort has been made to review the key developments, establish a code of best practice and unify future research approaches. The acquisition of dense 3D terrain information with high accuracy, high data acquisition speed and increasingly efficient post-processing workflows is helping to better quantify key parameters of rock slope instabilities across spatial and temporal scales ranging from cubic decimetres to millions of cubic metres and from hours to years, respectively. Key insights into the use of TLS in rock slope investigations include: (a) the capability of remotely obtaining the orientation of slope discontinuities, which constitutes a great step forward in rock mechanics; (b) the possibility to monitor rock slopes which allows not only the accurate quantification of rockfall rates across wide areas but also the spatio-temporal modelling of rock slope deformation with an unprecedented level of detail. Studying rock slopes using TLS presents a series of key challenges, from accounting for the fractal character of rock surface to detecting the precursory deformation that may help in the future prediction of rock failures. Further investigation on the development of new algorithms for point cloud filtering, segmentation, feature extraction, deformation tracking and change detection will significantly improve our understanding on how rock slopes behave and evolve. Perspectives include the use of new 3D sensing devices and the adaptation of techniques and methods recently developed in other disciplines as robotics and 3D computer-vision to rock slope instabilities research.

Abstract. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides highresolution point clouds of the topography and new TLS instruments with ranges exceeding 300 m or even 1000 m are powerful tools for characterizing and monitoring slope movements. This study focuses on the 35 million m 3Å knes rockslide in Western Norway, which is one of the most investigated and monitored rockslides in the world. The TLS point clouds are used for the structural analysis of the steep, inaccessible main scarp of the rockslide, including an assessment of the discontinuity sets and fold axes. TLS acquisitions in 2006, 2007 and 2008 provide information on 3-D displacements for the entire scanned area and are not restricted like conventional survey instruments to single measurement points. The affine transformation matrix between two TLS acquisitions precisely describes the rockslide displacements and enables their separation into translational components, such as the displacement velocity and direction, and rotational components, like toppling. This study shows the ability of TLS to obtain reliable 3-D displacement information over a large, unstable area. Finally, a possible instability model for the upper part ofÅknes rockslide explains the measured translational and rotational displacements by a combination of southward planar sliding along the gneiss foliation, gravitational vertical settlement along the complex, stepped basal sliding surface and northward toppling toward the opened graben structure.

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