Landslide Risk Assessment and Mitigation—Kottayam-Kumili Road Case Study

Landslide is the most common natural hazard occurring especially in hilly areas, particularly along highway corridors which adversely affect human life and the environment. Kerala state is a narrow segment of land in the south-western part of peninsular India that experiences several types of landslides, especially during the monsoon seasons, which mainly includes debris flow. In the Idukki district of Kerala, the occurrence of landslides is frequent mostly along with road cuts. Here in this paper, different topographical features of 5.7 km road cutting along Kottayam-Kumili Road from Chuzhuppu to Murinjapuzha are studied using QGIS software, and slope stability analyses have carried out using Slide2 software after obtaining geotechnical properties of soil. Results showed that the factors of safety of all the three slopes are below the safe value, which necessitates the design of suitable control measures to minimize landslide activities. Because of this, further stability analyses have performed involving the application of micropile reinforcement along the slopes as a scheme of control measures by integrating Slide2 with RSPile, which is a general pile analysis software. Factors of safety increased significantly, which shows the suitability of micropile reinforcement as an innovative method for slope stabilization.