Real-Time Monitoring of Climactic and Geotechnical Variables during Landslides on the Slopes of Serra do Mar and Serra da

The municipalities of Ubatuba, Campos do Jordão, and São José dos Campos are located in the re-gion of São Paulo State (Brazil). These municipalities are recognized nationally for having an ele-vated number of recorded landslides on slopes and embankments. In addition, these municipali-ties contain multiple areas that are at risk for landslides. Various soil landslides occurred in these municipalities in January 2013, when real-time climactic and geotechnical variables were moni-tored by automatic rain gauges, humidity sensors and soil temperature and suction devices. The resulting data were used to understand the functions of each variable in the occurrence of land-slides. Analyses of rainfall, humidity and soil temperature were used with field investigations to formulate a hypothesis regarding the predominant rupture mechanism and the role of each mo-nitored variable in the deflagration of the soil landslides that occurred in the three studied muni-cipalities. The geotechnical variable data revealed that both temperature and soil moisture con-tents played fundamental roles in the deflagration of shallow planar landslides in urban areas. The hourly rain intensity and/or rainfall accumulation for 24 and/or 72 h were responsible fo