Systematic Reliability-Based Environmental Design of Erosion for Efficient Engineered Landscape Profiling

Evolving environmental legislation has received increased attention worldwide in the last two decades, reported by Bradfield, Schultz, and Stone in 1996 in Environmental management in the Australian minerals and energy industries. The focus of concern by the industry, environmental regulatory agencies, and members of the public is the potential impacts associated with unstable landscapes which sometimes lead to slope failures, especially in hillside development. Engineered landscape profiles, though stable at the end of construction, may deteriorate over time due to erosion. There is thus a need to increase the base of knowledge on the existing practices of engineered profile design, hillside development, reshaping practices, and erosion control. With escalating production costs and the keen competitiveness in the industry world wide, the necessity to increase the efficiency of engineered profile development is further gaining prominence. This paper reviews the advancement of erosion management research in the industry, economics of landscape profiling, the practical application of the Point Estimate probabilistic technique, and the optimum design selection for the systematic planning and reshaping of engineered landscape profiles. The probabilistic engineering design erosion nomographs developed is useful in determining and illustrating quantitatively the reliability of final engineered landscape designs and the reshaping costs involved for different soil texture types. Landscape designs, which meet environmentally acceptable levels of reliability against erosion failure at optimum earthmoving reshaping costs, can be obtained using this probabilistic engineering design approach whilst satisfying environmental standards and community expectations for erosion minimisation.