  The stability of geotechnical infrastructure assets, such as cuttings and
embankments, is crucial to the safe and efficient delivery of transport
services. The successful emulation of geotechnical models of deterioration of
infrastructure slopes has the potential to inform slope design, maintenance and
remediation by introducing the time dependency of deterioration into
geotechnical asset management. We have performed computer experiments of
deterioration, measured by the factor of safety (FoS), for a set of cutting
slope geometries and soil properties that are common in the southern UK. Whilst
computer experiments are an extremely useful and cost-effective method of
better understanding deterioration mechanisms, it would not be practical to run
enough experiments to understand relations between high-dimensional inputs and
outputs. Therefore, we trained a fully-Bayesian Gaussian process emulator using
an ensemble of 75 computer experiments to predict the FoS. We construct two
different emulator models, one approximating the FoS temporal evolution with a
quadratic model and one approximating the temporal evolution with a B-spline
model; and we emulated their parameters. We also compare the ability of our
models to predict failure time. The developed models could be used to inform
infrastructure cutting slope design and management, and extend serviceable
life.
