Scripting STABL with PSO for analysis of slope stability

Landslide is a recurring problem in Taiwan as well as other parts of the world, which kills many persons every year. The more developed the societies, the more vulnerable they are to the occurrences of natural disasters. That is why the analysis of slope stability continues to receive high attention amongst researchers. In this study, the authors aimed to use the standard landslide analysis program (STABL) and turned it into a computation engine for PSO. A scripting program and a batch file were written to control the execution of STABL. The results of STABL were automatically analyzed by the scripting program to produce the next generation׳s input data files. After the system had been tested on a standard soil slope, the result showed very promising potentials. Not only did the system converge to a solution, but it also generated the best solution ever in the literature.