The soil nails increased the factor of safety by a significant amount in our examples. Applying the same mitigation strategy to the Oso Landslide, we believe that the FS would increase. In the first Oso Landslide example, the FS was 0.78. Addition of soil nails to the slope could have been the increase in resisting force needed to push the FS to over 1.
By understanding landslides and their failure mechanisms through the use of computational modeling, scientists and engineers can better characterize and potentially predict slope failure and therefore prevent property damage, loss to human life, and economic impact. In addition, by understanding how various mitigation strategies like soil nails affect slope stability, we can use these strategies to reduce risk and vulnerability to landslide hazards.