Slope stability analysis based on the integration of GIS and numerical simulation

The integration of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and the numerical simulation for slope stability analysis is investigated in this paper. The powerful spatial analysis functions of GIS such as automatic profile generation and gridding of the digital elevation model (DEM) are used in the preliminary treatment of numerical modeling, and a program for transforming GIS data to a commercial finite difference code FLAC has been developed using FLAC's built-in programming language, FISH. At last, for demonstrating the reliability of this technique, the stability analysis of Xuecheng slope in 2D and 3D is performed and discussed. The preprocessing of data using GIS software for slope numerical simulation leads to saving time and money besides providing the real world data for use in numerical modeling.

► GIS technique is used to help the numerical slope modeling.
► 2D and 3D numerical slope models were built in the aid of GIS.
► Strength reduction method is applied to calculate the safety factor.
► There are many advantages about 3D numerical simulation compared with 2D.