Towards Sustainable Rockfall Protection: An Interaction Matrix Method for Assessing Flexible Barrier Siting Adaptability

Earthquake-triggered rockfalls pose significant threats to human lives, critical infrastructure, and the natural environment, highlighting an urgent need for sustainable and effective mitigation strategies. Flexible barriers are effective against rockfall, but there is a lack of universal procedures for selecting appropriate sites. As a result, flexible barriers are often misused, and their protective effect significantly decreases. To address this, a method for quantitatively characterizing the “flexible barrier siting adaptability” is proposed. The concept of “flexible barrier siting adaptability” is used to assess the suitability of a selected site for flexible barrier installation. The assessment method consists of three parts: the evaluation index system, the evaluation index value standards, and the calculation method. The evaluation index system is based on the interaction matrix considering not only the factors influencing the flexible barrier siting adaptability but also the interactions between them. The interaction matrix is determined by the expert semi-quantitative method, which can quantitatively assess the flexible barrier siting adaptability. Furthermore, the proposed method is applied to a typical rockfall area in Jiuzhaigou county, Sichuan province, China. This method provides a resource-efficient and practical tool for preliminary site assessment, contributing to the development of sustainable infrastructure and enhancing community resilience in rockfall-prone regions.