Here’s an interesting thought: a natural event only becomes a disaster when it impacts a community. And with New Zealand straddling a major plate boundary and severe weather events occurring more frequently, it’s crucial for every geotechnical professional in New Zealand to understand how to build resilient solutions to minimise impact on communities.
Last week, three of our geotechnical team attended the highly informative New Zealand Geotechnical Society ‘Performance, Design and Management of Slopes for Resilience in Earthquakes’ course in Christchurch. The course was designed to challenge participants to think about how consultants can influence the alignment of corridor routes, and choice of development locations, to achieve more sustainable and resilient slope solutions.
The course reinforced the importance of asset management and sustainable design. By thinking of resilience as the speed at which a service can be restored after a natural event, the solution should focus on quickly recoverable ductile solutions.
There was a refreshing emphasis on the critical role of engineering geologists. Understanding the geology and failure mechanisms before starting a slope model is essential, as is embracing uncertainty in ground models and input parameters. This highlighted the importance of involving engineering geologists early in the process – not just when disaster strikes.
The course also sparked robust discussions on topics like topographical amplification, which peak ground acceleration (PGA) to use, and quantifying deformation in seismic slope design. And there were also loads of cool slides of failed slopes!
The increasing frequency of natural hazards makes our role as consultants more crucial than ever.
Building communities and providing enduring solutions is what we do – by prioritising resilience, sustainability, and early geological insight, we can help build communities and enhanced environments.
