Southern Italian Landslide (Updated 6 Mar 2010)

Impressive landslide caught on video (16.02.2010) in the southern Italian town of Maierato. About 200 residents have been evacuated from their homes.

Check out the video.

Added new video of helicopter flyover from the next day (thanks Bev).

Photos from Haiti Earthquake

As I’m sure you are all aware the 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake was a catastrophic magnitude 7.0 Mw earthquake. Its epicentre was near the town of Léogâne, approximately 25 km west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital.
One of the Congress keynote speakers, Dr Sergio Mora has provided the blog with the following information and photos from his recent trip to Haiti.

Sergio has forwarded a set of pictures illustrating (before and after photos) the most typical examples of structural failures associated with the Haiti earthquake.

He makes the following comments:

“In some cases, I had the chance to take pictures, one or several months before the quake, during previous working missions.
As you can see, building practices in Haiti are extremely precarious. There was no building code in place, although there was already a draft which had been forwarded to the Government of Haiti by its authors on January 11th, 24 hours before the earthquake…!
On the other hand, some international companies, such as the telephone and internet provider Digicel, applied corporate standards and its 15 storeys building stood with no harm at all. In the pictures, you will also see totally collapsed buildings besides neighbouring structures, still standing and relatively harmlessly. So, selective damage must be the product of inconsistent practices. Perhaps even some minor care and common sense by builders, saved many structures.
It is clear that an M=7 event is quite a hit anywhere in the world, but we also have to admit that definitely not sufficient to generate the kind of damage that occurred. The extent and degree of damage was at least one or two orders of magnitude above what could have been expected just by complying to any average building code. The difference is indeed the very high vulnerability and the very low quality of design, location, building processes and quality control of materials.”

Thanks to Sergio for supplying the blog with some interesting photos and insights.

1a CentroComercialLesVillages-HotelMontana-Junio2009

1b LesVillagesMall-HotelMontana-Feb2010-SergioMora

2a Juvenat-Junio2009

2b Juvenat-Feb2010

3 NationalPresidentialPalace-PauP-Feb2010-SergioMora

4a CanapVert-BackENAF-Dec2009-SergioMora

4b CanapVert-BackENAF-Feb2010-SergioMora

5a HospitalSodec-PauP-Dec2009-SergioMora

5b HospitalSodec-Feb2010

6 Feb2010

7 InsufficientlyTiedupColumn-HotelKaribe-Feb2010-SergioMora

Hot of the Press

Over 550 papers have been received by the Congress committee. A great response.

All papers are now being distributed to reviewers and you will be getting any review comments back in due course.

Don’t forget to take advantage of the super earlybird registration for the Congress before 31 March 2010.

Richard Wolters Prize

So what is the Richard Wolters Prize all about… I thought I would do a little research… for those of you that are interested here are some links to read up a little more.

http://www.iaeg.info/AboutIAEG/Awardsandprizes/RichardWoltersprize/tabid/74/Default.aspx

http://www.springerlink.com/content/au86740989559682/ Article on Richard Wolters in IAEG Bulletin Volume 23 Number 1/ June 1981

The Richard Wolters’ Prize was formally established at the 1986 IAEG Council Meeting in Buenos Aires to commemorate the life and work of Dr. Richard Wolters.

The Prize specifically recognises meritorious scientific achievement by a younger member of the engineering geology profession and is awarded to honour Dr. Wolters’ many contributions to international understanding and co-operation.This year the Richard Wolters Prize is a highlight of the Young Professionals day at the congress and it would be great to have a whole bunch of young professionals there on Sunday 5 Sept for the presentations.

Up to 16 young (under the age of 40!) representatives from countries around the world will be presenting at the Richard Wolters Prize Finalist Presentations.

Has your country nominated their representative yet? Nominations have to be in to the IAEG Secretary General by 5 March 2010.

Richard Wolters Prize Medal

2 weeks for final deadline of papers

Only 2 weeks to go until the final deadline for submission of papers for the Congress… how is yours going? Due date is 7 Feb.

There’s been a great response to the Call for Abstracts, some stats on the congress programme so far:

• Five plenary speakers
• Over 900 abstracts from 56 countries
• Five themes; thirty sub themes

Phew it’s going to be a busy five days plus one extra for the Young Professionals!

The planning for the YP day is coming along and there are over 70 interested YP’s registered from 29 countries in our database….so I hope your finalising your papers and planning your trip downunder.

Making the most of your time in New Zealand

It’s a great time to be thinking whether to stay longer in NZ after the Congress. There’s lots of options from the awesome scenery to a wide range of tourist activities – coastal walks, scenic boat trips, biking tours, kayaking, viewing an active volcano or relaxing at a picturesque vineyard.

Here are some photos from my recent trip to White Island; an active volcano!  I’ll add more photos from my own adventures around NZ… I better get back to writing my paper.

Flying in to land on White Island (not me!)

Hot and steamy!

Welcome all, 2010 is here

2010 is finally on us.  My name is Kate and I am the young professionals coordinator for the Congress.  I will be writing a blog through to the start of the IAEG Congress in Sept 2010.  There will be Congress updates and also interesting geological/ engineering news on the way!  I will also be adding some background information on the mid and post field trips which are also available as part of the Congress activities.

Don’t forget, congress papers are due 7 February and registrations are open with super early-bird to the 31 March, saving NZ$400 on full fees!

Those that may be under financial hardship can apply for the Solidarity Fund.  Applications close 31 March.

YPs should also register for the YP programme at the bottom of the online registration form.

On 5 September, before the Congress begins, the YP programme is focused on young professionals and student engineering geologists, it includes

• Breakfast with adventurer Jamie Fitzgerald: World-record trans-Atlantic rower, South Pole adventurer, international speaker, business owner and ex-bank manager

• Morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea provided

• Richard Wolters Prize Presentations

• Match Racing in America’s Cup Yachts

If there is anything that you would like to see/ discuss  in particular please comment and I’ll see what I can do.

See you in 8 months.