Landslide guidelines and best practices for professional engineers and geoscientists

Abstract

Documents that summarize “best practices” of a discipline are often widely used to provide bench marks of performance, guidance, expectations and sources of reference to practitioners. Such documents can range from those that are lengthy prescriptive, regulatory and obligatory in the legal sense, to those that are short generalized views of opinion that lack peer consensus. More frequently, “best practice” documents are timely and extensive compilations prepared by a peer community that summarize and illustrate current philosophies and protocols regarding various methods, techniques and procedures. During the past decade a number of countries have published landslide-related best practice documents. Typically these documents are nation specific. They are often written to address landslides in the specific social, cultural, political and natural terrain and territory represented within those nations’ borders. As a consequence some of the information they contain is not readily transferable across political borders. Landslide professionals in Canada now have access to their own best practices document. The aim of the document is to provide a Canadian state-of-the-art synthesis of landslide topics including: terminology; socio-economic significance; landslide classification and description; identification and mapping; site investigation, analysis, monitoring and treatment; risk management and evaluation; examples of common landslide types; and professional practice issues. Specialists from the Geological Survey of Canada have coordinated contributions from a number of Canadian landslide specialists representing government, academia and the private sector. Some 60 participants contributed as advisors, editors, authors and reviewers to the 11 open files (chapters) comprising this project. This initiative provides an example of a successful program and strategy that will serve both Canadian landslide professionals and the public on an issue that is important to the health and safety of Canada’s population and infrastructure. The document can be readily adopted or adapted by other countries interested in improving professional practices related to landslides within their country.