Fast-moving water along soil slopes causes severe hydraulic scour and can also wash away slope-protective covers, leading to soil slope instability. In this paper, the application of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) -a meshfree numerical method -to triggering surface runoff along a soil slope was investigated in view of predicting fast-moving landslides such as debris flows and avalanche. SPH source code of the flow governing equation, in FORTRAN language, was developed to run the simulation. Results and snapshots of the simulation suggest that the SPH scheme effectively captures the important aspects of the surface runoff phenomenon. Comparison with the results obtained using the standard open channel hydraulics equation of Manning's shows the SPH method predicts the velocity of flow reasonably. © 2013 IEEE.