Brief communication: On direct impact probability of landslides on vehicles

Abstract

When calculating the risk of railway or road users of being killed by a natural hazard, one has to calculate a temporal spatial probability, i.e. the probability of a vehicle being in the path of the falling mass when the mass falls, or the expected number of affected vehicles in case such of an event. To calculate this, different methods are used in the literature, and, most of the time, they consider only the dimensions of the falling mass or the dimensions of the vehicles. Some authors do however consider both dimensions at the same time, and the use of their approach is recommended. Finally, a method considering an impact on the front of the vehicle is discussed.