After four years of economic crisis with no investment into intervention measures in slopes besides those corresponding to emergency actions, the Spanish Government decided in 2015 to destinate 4 million euros to the slopes survey of the complete railway network across the country. For such purpose and before the inspection campaigns were started, INES was awarded with a contract to define a unique criteria and system for conducting the slopes surveys in a uniform way, so that when finished it would allow the comparison of the data collected by different companies and different inspection teams.

INES started by the defining the data required to evaluate the slopes stability and assess the potential risk of failure, together with the data necessary for an efficient asset management and estimation of stabilization interventions. INES developed a methodology for Risk Assessment and Asset Management of Geotechnical assets, supported by an algorithm that allows scoring the slopes based on several weighted factors that influence in the slope stability.

Apart from the theoretical methodology, INES designed the survey sheets and developed a mobile application for the data collection on the field. Such electronic survey sheets allow uploading the collected information directly into a server where all the surveys can be managed, and results can be analyzed and exploited.