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Geotechnical News • March 2017
GEOHAZARDS
Introduction by Richard Guthrie, Editor
Welcome to the inaugural episode of
Geohazards! It will become, I hope,
a place holder for interesting stories,
advancing technologies, case studies
and scientific inquiry where Geohaz-
ards take centre stage as the primary
subject.
At the 69th CGS conference in Van-
couver, the Geohazards committee
meeting was so well attended that one
of the conference executive actually
began to back out of the room before
realizing that he was indeed in the cor-
rect place. We decided that the interest
in Geohazards was sufficient and
widespread enough to warrant a larger
communication effort. Oldrich Hungr
suggested that Geotechnical News was
the best venue to reach CGS members,
and I volunteered to lead the effort.
John and Lynn were kind enough
to be enthusiastic and John specifi-
cally asked that we begin this journey
by looking back to understand how
Geohazards evolved into it’s own dis-
cipline. And that, my friends, is what
follows for this quarter.
Geohazards defined
Formally, a Geohazard is a destructive
event caused or exacerbated by Earth
processes with the potential to nega-
tively impact humans or things that
humans value (health, the environ-
ment, economy, and infrastructure).
Geohazards include:
• Landslides,
• Floods,
• Subsidence,
• Coastal Erosion,
• River Erosion,
• Slope Erosion, and
• Outburst Floods (glacial lake
outburst floods, landslide dam
outburst floods)
• Thermokarst (melting of perma-
frost)
Solicitation of articles
Please send me your articles, news,
stories or case histories on topics
related to Geohazards or Geohazards
and Risk. What are you working on
the members of the CGS should know
about? We want to hear.
Send abstract submissions to:
News
A reminder that the 7th GeoHazards
Conference will be held in Can-
more June 3-6 2018. Sign up for the
Geohazards 7 Newsletter here
About the Editor
Dr. Richard Guthrie (Rick) is an
Engineering Geomorphologist with an
overriding interest in landslides (pun
intended). Rick obtained a BSc from
the University of Calgary (Geomor-
phology), an MSc from University
of Victoria (Quaternary Geology –
landslide characterization) and a PhD
from Waterloo (Engineering Geology
– landslide behavior) and is alumni of
the first Landslide Risk Assessment
and Mitigation class held annually in
Italy. He spent 15 years with the BC
Ministry of Environment as a regional
and ultimately the provincial geomor-
phologist before moving to private
practice in 2010. Rick has also been
fortunate enough to visit and partici-
pate in Geohazards projects around
the world including the USA, Hong
Kong, Republic of Georgia, Philip-
pines, Italy, Panama, Colombia, Peru,
Russia, and Switzerland for NATO,
Canadian Foreign Affairs, Hong Kong
GEO office, University of Basel,
major industrial companies (typical of
consulting), and several legal teams.
Career highlights include investigating
the deadly Guinsaugon landslide in
the Philippines, the 100 Mm
3
Kolka
landslide in the Northern Caucuses,
Canada’s own Mount Meager land-
Richard Guthrie
