Rockfall risk assessment for pilgrims along the circumambulatory pathway, Saptashrungi Gad Temple, Vani, Nashik Maharashtra, India

Abstract

This paper mainly describes the assessment of rockfall risk for the large number of pilgrims along the parikrama path (circumbultory or pathway around the shrine) at the Saptashrungi Gad Temple, Vani, Nashik, Maharashtra, India. The temple is constructed on moderately weathered and fractured basaltic terrain along the steep high hill slope. The loose rockmass from the top of the hill occasionally fall, bounce, roll and slide down along the slope of the temple with some rockmass blocks landing on or passing the parikrama path. This leads to risk while taking parikrama along the hill. A quantitative risk assessment (QRA) was undertaken to determine the risk for the pilgrims performing parikrama along the parikrama paths struck by rockfalls and the risk reduction capabilities of various remedial work. The obtained QRA results indicate that, the societal risk cannot be acceptable.

Emergent characteristics of rockfall inventories captured at a regional scale

“…Their volumes typically range from~10 -2 to 10 2 m 3 , but in some cases they have been known to reach 10 5 m 3 (for example, Wieczorek et al, 1998;Stock et al, 2012). Rockfall activity is also a chronic hazard (Evans and Hungr, 1993;Guzzetti et al, 2003;Wieczorek et al, 2008), often posing significant risks to transportation corridors (Guzzetti et al, 2004;Katz et al, 2011;Blais-Stevens et al, 2012;Michoud et al, 2012;Ansari et al, 2014), pipelines (Blais-Stevens et al, 2010;Couture et al, 2010), and to areas beneath (sea) cliffs (Dewez et al, 2013;Marques et al, 2013). Rockfall activity has been monitored extensively in these settings, and in some cases this monitoring has been used to provide hazard and risk forecasting (Collins and Stock, 2012;Stock et al, 2012;Royán et al, 2013).…”

Slope Stability Assessment of Saptashrungi Gad Temple, Vani, Nashik, Maharashtra, India—A Numerical Approach

“…However, for sec-tion CC′, DD′, HH′, II′ and QQ′, the maximum total displacement is greater than 1.0 cm and any local or global disturbance may cause decrease in material strength, ultimately resulting in localized slope failures. The fracture pattern identified during the field visit indicated the problem of rockfall, which had been reported by References [14] [17] and some of the protection measures had been proposed. Also, the proposed protection measures have already been installed in some part of the SGT hill and it has stopped/minimized the falling of rocks.…”

“…These joints were closely spaced and persistence. Moreover, heavy rainfall during June to September also serves as a triggering agent for slope instability [14].…”

“…for "para" river course. The annual rainfall is 98.1 mm to 146.1 mm in the month of June to September with maximum of 206.4 mm in July [14].…”

“…Although finite element analyses provide majority of slopes are stable in nature; however, given that rockfall is a frequent happening at the SGT hill, 2D and 3D rockfall studies have been performed at SGT hill [14] [17].…”