Landslide hazard and risk: Getting it

right. As the November torrential rains swept over coastal British Columbia, heralding the more reactive winter field season, I began to think about landslide hazards. Geoscientists are routinely asked to try to accurately identify hazard and risk based on limited knowledge. On the surface this appears to be a straight forward task, more realistically however, it involves specialized skills, experience, and ideally – good data. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years examining landslides in both coastal British Columbia and worldwide. Examples where the hazard and risk are poorly understood are numerous, and the results are often costly. Applied or engineering geomorphology is ideally incorporated into planning and scoping stages of a project. All too often, however, the need to understand the process and its recurrence intervals is apparent late in the planning process, or after the project is complete, when the cost of such poor understanding is higher. research, but recent careful studies have dramatically improved our understanding of both the debris flow fan on BC’s Cheakamus and the Huascarán debris flow fan in Peru. With lives and property at stake, getting it right has never been more important. It’s my hope that you find it interesting and potentially useful. As always, Island Geoscience welcomes new submissions or ideas for articles. If there are topics you would like to see covered, or if you have an article or idea you would like to contribute, please send me your ideas at