Characterization and Monitoring of an Unstable Rock Face by Microseismic Methods

Abstract

Unstable rock slopes are likely to cause rockfalls, threatening human lives and properties, industrial activities, and transportation infrastructures in mountain areas. There is an increasing demand to forecast and mitigate the potential damage of rockfalls by developing a reliable early warning system. In this thesis, an unstable mountain slope in northern Italy was selected as the research target. A microseismic monitoring network has been operating since 2013 as a field research laboratory to study the microseismic monitoring technique in the perspective of developing rockfall early warning systems. Locating microseismic events is a basic step of this technique to obtain the location of developing cracks as possible precursors of rockfalls. However, it is still a challenging task due to the heterogeneity of fractured rock slopes. The main purpose of this thesis is to address the issues related to event localization for microseismic monitoring strategy applied to the unstable rock face. Graphical Abstract