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<p>Roadside slope failures persistently challenge mountainous developing countries where fragile geology, steep terrain, intense rainfall, and rapid road expansion amplify landslide risk. Nepal exemplifies this condition with recurrent slope failures disrupting transport despite existing policies and technical guidelines. This study systematically assesses Nepal’s roadside slope management framework as a representative case of slope-risk governance in mountainous regions. The study reviews national policies, analyzes ten roadside landslide cases, examines maintenance and loss datasets, and surveys 40 professionals to evaluate lifecycle governance effectiveness using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results reveal a pronounced lifecycle imbalance: while policy/design guidance is relatively developed, construction-phase safeguards, such as exposure-time limits for newly excavated slopes absent in Nepal’s standards but typical in international practice to mitigate rainfall-triggered failures, and operational maintenance provisions remain weakly regulated. Economic analyses and evidence from extreme events indicate that direct costs associated with road closures are escalating. PLS-SEM results indicate that integrated risk planning and policy awareness significantly enhance management effectiveness, whereas institutional capacity alone has a limited direct impact. The findings highlight the need for comprehensive, enforceable, lifecycle-oriented, and climate-adaptive slope management emphasizing preventive investment, construction-phase control, and applied policy knowledge, with potentially transferable relevance for other mountainous developing regions.</p>

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Policy lessons for sustainable roadside slope management in mountainous regions: a case study of Nepal

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

    开放获取

  • 发表日期：

    2026年6月22日

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  • Keshab Kumar Sharma,
  • Netra Prakash Bhandary,
  • Mandip Subedi,
  • Rajan KC

摘要

Roadside slope failures persistently challenge mountainous developing countries where fragile geology, steep terrain, intense rainfall, and rapid road expansion amplify landslide risk. Nepal exemplifies this condition with recurrent slope failures disrupting transport despite existing policies and technical guidelines. This study systematically assesses Nepal’s roadside slope management framework as a representative case of slope-risk governance in mountainous regions. The study reviews national policies, analyzes ten roadside landslide cases, examines maintenance and loss datasets, and surveys 40 professionals to evaluate lifecycle governance effectiveness using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). The results reveal a pronounced lifecycle imbalance: while policy/design guidance is relatively developed, construction-phase safeguards, such as exposure-time limits for newly excavated slopes absent in Nepal’s standards but typical in international practice to mitigate rainfall-triggered failures, and operational maintenance provisions remain weakly regulated. Economic analyses and evidence from extreme events indicate that direct costs associated with road closures are escalating. PLS-SEM results indicate that integrated risk planning and policy awareness significantly enhance management effectiveness, whereas institutional capacity alone has a limited direct impact. The findings highlight the need for comprehensive, enforceable, lifecycle-oriented, and climate-adaptive slope management emphasizing preventive investment, construction-phase control, and applied policy knowledge, with potentially transferable relevance for other mountainous developing regions.