32 The Oprăneşti landslide (Mehedinţi county) – evaluation, impact, solutions Sandu Boengiu, Oana Mititelu-Ionuş, Claudia Albă Geography Department University of Craiova Craiova, Romania Daniel Simulescu Institute of Geography Romanian Academy Bucharest, Romania Abstract— On May 24, 2016, in Husnicioara commune (Mehedinţi county) the county road 607A (Cerneţi-Prunişor), communal road 17A (which connects to Oprăneşti village) and the electricity transport network were affected by landslides. Because of the landslide and the associated processes there were damaged both roads, embankments and all other previously built elements for the slope’s stabilization, taking off the water from rainfall, combat and mitigate erosion (cassettes, supporting walls, concrete ditches, tailboards etc.). The damage to the road network consisted in the destruction of some sectors from county road 607A on a length of 443 m and communal road 17A on a length of 131 m. The terrain reconfiguration which occurred because of the horizontal and vertical movements, locally destroyed the electricity transport network by collapse the supporting pillars of electric cables. Field measurements carried out from 2 to 16 June 2016 with GPS South S-82T were processed using GIS techniques and obtaining the numerical model of the landslide. After corroborating field analysis with the thematic maps resulted from the overlapping of the layers specific to the relief, lithology, land use/cover, it was established that the whole sectors affected by the landslide (DJ 607A and DC 17A) were destroyed, and that is impossible to restore them on the current emplacement. Taking into account the physical, geographical and territorial distribution of human settlements, for the reopening of DJ 607A there were identified and proposed as solutions two different routes with low risk and vulnerability to landslides. Keywords— landslide; road network; GIS; vulnerability; Oprăneşti village I. INTRODUCTION Much of the world's road and railway network is built on embankments or in cuttings, thus, being susceptible to disruptions caused by landslides. The blockage of one or more roads by landslides can cause extensive detours and the delay of rescue and recovery operations, in those regions [1]. Although the modern civil engineering capabilities can rapidly repair the damages produced by landslides, the economic consequences of severing a major transport artery for even a short period can far outweigh the remedial costs [2]. The accurate evaluation of topographic attributes acquired with geo-referencing is an important element for the delineation and characterization of landslides [3, 4]. Positioning based on GPS satellites allows a faster localization of the attributes required for geomorphologic studies, unpublished [5, 6]. Also, field surveys are focused to estimate qualitatively damages along these roads [7]. II. STUDY AREA In Husnicioara commune, the county road 607A (Cerneţi – Prunişor), the communal road 17A (which connects to Oprăneşti village) and the electricity network were affected by mass movements in the spring of 2016. The county road 607A was affected by a landslide and other associated processes, on a length of 443 m (Fig. 1). Fig. 1. DJ 607A: 1-3 m vertical displacement (left); random deformation of the road, embankments and rockfill supporting cassettes, displacement in the plane of 150 m (right) (Photo by Boengiu S., 16.06.2016). The associated processes to the landslide are areas of compaction with high amplitude, collapse of large masses of material, the tilting of the packages of lithological layers left undisturbed or strongly disturbed as against their sequence and original position, the appearance of fissures and cracks with variable depths and openings, the destruction of the vegetation layer. The communal road 17A was affected by the same landslide of a length of 131 m, bearing the same types of processes. The electricity network, which crossed the slided mass, was affected by the topographical reconfiguration occurred due to the horizontal and vertical movements. These led to the collapse of the pillars which supported the electric cables. DOI 10.15551/prgs.2017.32