Mitigating the Risk of Landslide on Hill-Site Development in Malaysia

Construction of residential buildings on hill-site in Malaysia has increased tremendously for the last 15 years due to depleting flat land and other influencing factors like beautiful scenery, fresh air, exclusiveness, etc. Safety of building on hill-site is often a topic of discussions among engineers and public. The Institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM) has taken the initiative to form a taskforce in 1999 to formulate the policies and procedures for mitigating the risk of landslide on hill-site development. The simplified classification of risk to landslide for hill-site development and recommendations by IEM will be reviewed and discussed in this paper. This paper also presents four important stages of geotechnical input to safeguard the safety of the public from landslide hazards. These geotechnical input are planning, design, construction and maintence. In this paper only soil slopes will be discussed with emphasis on the practical aspects of the works.