Students from Geosciences (UNIL) and Geology (UNIL-UNIGE) master programs attended the Slope Instability Field Camp from June 1^st to June 7^th 2014.
On the menu, a close examination of the La Vallette landslide, a big slope instability in the heights of the Ubaye Valley, above the municipality of Barcelonnette, and a visit to the famous Riou Bourdoux, a torrent on which the torrential mitigation techniques were pioneered in the XIX^th century.
Field mapping of cracks, bulges, water presence, as well as LiDAR acquisitions were carried out on the La Vallette site. The goal was to assess the general behaviour and volume of the moving mass, its geological and structural context, and to elaborate its hazard potential for the human settlements. Field data was combined with existing data (aerial photographs, existing DEMs, published litterature) and with numerical methods (Coltop 3D, SLBL, GIS tools) each evening.

A big thank you to our hosts at the Séolane center for the wonderful stay and to our guides on the field, Georges Guiter (ONF-RTM) and Alexandre Mathieu (Univ. Strasbourg).

Fieldwork Campaign in Tunisia – Structural characterization of oil reservoirs with Terrestrial Laser Scanning and GigaPan technics.

As part of her PhD thesis, Raja Mastouri of the Risk Group is working on coupling terrestrial LiDAR and 3D seismic to characterize brittle structures in a sedimentary basins on Eastern Tunisia. The goal of this research is to interpret the fractures and faults systems to understand the local tectonic history and how they affect reservoir rocks. This project is done in partnership with ETAP (Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activités Pétrolières) and Prof. Samir Bouaziz at Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieurs de Sfax.

During the last week of May 2014, Raja went for fieldwork in different sites of Eastern Tunisia with Robin Marchant (curator at the Museum of Geology of Lausanne), Antoine Guerin (PhD student in the Risk Group) and engineering geologists and geophysicists from ETAP: Marzouk Lazzez, Wiem Harrathi, Achraf Boulaares and Majdi Akremi. They collected extensive information (in-situ measurements, terrestrial laser scanner and GigaPan) on fracture systems at outcrop level, with a particular focus on reservoir analogues.

The field work training in Les Diablerets related to the Landslide and Flooding modules from the Specialisation certificate for the Assessment and Management of Geological and Climate Related Risk (CERG), have taken place between the 26-30 May 2014. This international training aims to increase the capacities of local scientists on disaster risk reduction related to natural hazards (http://www.unige.ch/sciences/terre/mineral/CERG/index.html).

During the field work, the teaching team was composed by: Dr. Corine Frischknecht and Dr. Irene Manzella from the University of Geneva, Dr. Olivier Lateltin from SwissTopo and David Consuegra from HEIG-VD Yverdon Les Bains, and Prof. Michel Jaboyedoff and Dr. Ivanna Penna from our Group Risk (University of Lausanne).

The field work in Les Diablerets was attended by 19 students from Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, who conducted a risk assessment considering the contribution of landslides and debris flows to flooding, and evaluated the vulnerability of the exposed values and infrastructure, with a final goal of a risk map construction.