Application of the Sensitivity Analysis of a Natural Slope

The landslide phenomenon in Albania is widely spread and as such many studies have been conducted to estimate the nature of the landslides in different sites in all the country and therefore to find the appropriate stabilization methods. The widely known and used methods of calculating a single factor of safety to estimate the stability of a slope require the usage of single mean values of the parameters when in fact the slope stability problem, as a geotechnical phenomenon, is characterized by many uncertainties due to the variations of the geotechnical parameters, ground water levels, seismic action etc. These uncertainties can have a huge impact in the analysis results if not considered properly. There is an increasing interest in the probabilistic approaches to take into account these uncertainties and the sensitivity analysis is one of the approaches. The aim of this paper is that by using relevant geotechnical literature, geotechnical data and computer modelling to conduct a sensitivity analysis of a natural slope in order to determine the sensitivity of the factor of safety towards different parameters which have a uniform distribution (the same probability of occurrence) and have a variation in a specified minimum and maximum range. The determination of the parameters with the greater influence in the reduction of the factor of safety using the sensitivity analysis can lead to a more conservative approach of the slope stability problem and of the stabilization methods.