Assessment and modeling of roadside geological risks in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau region

This study identified and assessed spatiotemporal distribution, and modeled influencing factors, of roadside geological risks for the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau regions towards enhancing the safety of road operations. It utilized Latent Dirichlet Allocation model to identify risks, hotspot analysis and normalized spectral entropy to assess the spatiotemporal risk distribution, and Generalized Estimation Equations to analyze the relationship between geological risk susceptibility and the influencing factors. Finally, a case study was conducted to apply this methodology. The findings indicated that mountain geological hazards could affect areas up to 2,000 m from the roadway. Roadbed and tunnel sections, and lower-grade highways were more susceptible to mountain geological hazards, while higher-grade highways tended to have lower frozen soil thermal stability in their roadbed sections. This study provides valuable insights into the coupling effects between engineering and geological environments, crucial for informed route layout decisions and effective management of roadside geological risks.