Once again the field course for master students in risk took place in the beautiful valley of Ubaye this year. During 11 days (end of May – beginning of June 2019), 12 students from environmental risk or geological risk had the opportunity to study the landslide of Lavalette, work on rockwall stability and discover the processes leading to debris flows. We had the pleasure to be hosted at the scientific center of Seolane in Barcelonnette.
Debris flow channel of the Riou Bourdoux torrent
Like every year, The European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna 2019 (7 – 12 April) was a great opportunity for our Risk Group to present recent researches and to interact with the international and multidiscipline platform of experts and scientists.
This assembly was a record-breaking meeting, with 16,250 presentations: 5,531 orals, 9,432 posters, and 1,287 PICOs. The program featured 683 unique scientific sessions together and received 16,273 scientists from 113 countries.
The Risk Group members presented 10 contributions as first authors whose titles are below.
2 Orals:
8 Posters:
The usual fieldtrip for bachelor students in risk took place in Les Diablerets . About twenty students took part to this course on 1-3 May 2019. The Pont Bourquin landslide was used for a mapping exercise and as a starting point for a risk analysis.
Example of a landslide map produced by students during 1 day mapping
Ryan Kromer is PhD graduate of Queen’s University and a post doctoral researcher at the Colorado School of Mines. He was a visiting PhD student at the University of Lausanne during 2015 and 2016 and is now visiting the Risk group from April to June 2019. During his visit, he will be conducting research on automated monitoring of landslides using terrestrial LiDAR and photogrammetry. The research visit is supported by the Herbette Foundation. Ryan is looking forward to another fruitfull visit with the group.
In collaboration with the Fondazione Montagna Sicura, Michel Jaboyedoff, Antoine Guerin and Li Fei went to Entrèves (Aosta Valley, Italy) on 23 October 2018 to investigate the 1997 Brenva rockslide scar (3’870 m, Mont-Blanc massif), which reactivated in September 2016. A helicopter flight of about 25 minutes allowed acquiring hundreds of pictures (digital and thermal) of the rock mass in exceptional conditions, as the high mountain was dry in late autumn 2018. A high-resolution Structure-from-Motion model was then generated using these pictures, allowing us to analyze in detail the structural features and rockfall activity of the Sperone della Brenva.
View of the Mt BLanc and Brenva spur
3D point cloud model obtained by photogrammetry