ABSTRACT
Volcanic rock masses present a distinctive behaviour, caused by its particular structure and composition, that distinguishes them from other kinds of rock masses. For this reason, the use of common geotechnical methods could be inappropriate for engineering studies in these materials. In this paper, we present a classification scheme for a preliminary assessment of the hazard related to slopes instability in volcanic rock masses. Using this classification, the degree of safety of the slopes can be estimated through the following parameters: strength of the rock, block size, joint characteristics, homogeneity and weathering degree of the rock mass, height and angle of slope, regularity of the slope face, parallelism between discontinuities and the slope face, dip angle of the discontinuities, size of the unstable blocks, thickness of the rock layers, and size of the biggest blocks in the pyroclastic matrix. These parameters were selected after a study of slopes across Tenerife Island (Spain).
