Ryszard Murzyn’s scientific contributions

The aim of the article was to present feasible and effective road stabilization method on built-up landslide areas. The study has involved a landslide area situated in a designated municipality of Nowy Sącz district, in the Małopolska region. In the studied area, in the lower part of the slope, a landslide has formed, through which a road is running, leading to residential and farm buildings located further up. Bearing in mind the economic aspect, whereas also looking for the most effective way to stabilize the road in the studied area, we have analysed a number of possible technical solutions, which included: a French drain, anchor micropiles with reinforced concrete top plate, and ground anchors. The stability coefficient of the stabilized landslide has been chosen as the indicator of the effectiveness of the applied technical solution, which should take the value of no less than 1.5 after landslide stabilization. Based on the calculations we have conducted, we can conclude that the French drain is not sufficient, and neither is using the anchor micropiles on their own. Only a combination of these two solutions, along with additional anchoring, provides an effective protection of the area.

Although landslides are a group of natural hazards, the factor causing their activation is often human activity. The construction of buildings and roads on slopes has an especially unfavourable impact on its stability. Additional load and disturbance of natural hydrological conditions are factors that may cause the reactivation of old landslides. This paper contains a case study of the activation of landslide processes, which was caused by human activity. In the area of the old and inactive landslide an educational complex was built. The complex consisted of four buildings located in one line across the slope. An additional, very unfavourable factor was the high level of groundwater, which was rising up to the ground surface temporarily. At the time of long-term rainfall activation of landslide processes in the substrate of the building occurred. These processes are characterized by slow changes, causing progressive destruction of buildings. The geological structure of the slope was determined by six core holes with a depth of about 20 m. On this basis, the geological layers, hydrological conditions and slide surface position were determined. Deformations of the slope and the building were monitored by using integrated survey techniques: precision leveling, electronic techeometry, traversing (angular-linear), static GNSS and laser scanning. The work includes the analysis of initial geological and hydrological conditions, the analy-sis of the causes and the course of deformation processes in the substructure, the results of the measurements and the analysis of the deformation of buildings caused by a landslide.

The North-Eastern Italy and the Polish part of the Carpathians are subject to high hydro-geological hazard due to its climatic, geological and geomorphological conformation, often inducing damages or destruction of resi-dential development, economic and transport infrastructures. Thus, the search for cost-effective solutions for risk mitigation and slope stabilization is fundamental in both the regions. The paper introduces a research pro-gram that developed an innovative technique for landslide stabilization, named composite anchors, improve-ment of the Soil Nailing, which consists of installing special passive sub-horizontal reinforcements in unstable slopes. After a brief overview on the main technical aspects, two real applications of passive reinforcements on slow-moving translational landslides are proposed.