GE4-305 Early Warning of Unstable Rock Slopes

Contents and structure

The teaching takes place from Monday to Friday in the last week of May or the first or second week of June at Campus Sogndal at HVL. The activity of that week is obligatory and includes lectures, field visit and exercises. One of the days we will walk up to the unstable mountain Stampa - Joasetebergi, between Aurland and Flåm, which is supervised by geologist from NVE, and explore the geology and monitoring instruments. The students should prepare and give a presentation on Friday; either about an unstable object in Norway and suggest a monitoring system for that object, or interpret a set of data collected from some of the instruments operated at Stampa or some other objects monitored by NVE in Norway.

In the lectures the students are introduced to unstable mountain-slopes in Norway that are currently monitored. In addition, some examples of monitored rock slopes from other parts of the world will be presented. Geologists from NVE will give some of the lectures.

Learning Outcome

Knowledge

The students should gain a good understanding of the geological settings and the kinematic models of the different unstable slopes and have detailed knowledge about the different kinds of ground-based instruments used to monitor movements, like crackmeter, tiltmeter, extensometer, laser, total station, DGPS-network, borehole-instrumentation and radar.

Skills

Students should be able to interpret data gathered with the different instruments and understand the data quality in terms of the accuracy and precision of the different measurements and the influence of various sources of errors.

General competence

Students should be able to interpret maps/DEMs/aerial images to locate a possible unstable mountain slope and suggest a suitable monitoring system based on observed movements (type of instruments, where they should be placed etc.).

Entry requirements

Bachelor's degree in geology.

Recommended previous knowledge

Courses in structural geology, applied geophysics, mineralogy and petrography, geological mapping.

Teaching methods

Lectures, student presentations and field visit.

Compulsory learning activities

It is obligatory to attend the lectures, field visit and prepare and perform a presentation. 

Assessment

Exam consists of two parts.

Part A is an assignment to write a popular scientific article. Deadline around August 20, counts 30 % of the grade.

Part B is a written examination, 4 hours, digital exam (home exam). Arranged in late August/beginning of September, counts 70 % of the grade.

Part A: From a selection of the research papers on the reading list, as decided by the teacher, you should pick one of the papers and write a popular scientific article about the research and results presented in that research paper. The requirements for your popular paper is that it should have a title, a lead paragraph (introduction) of 1-2 sentences and a main body text arranged into paragraphs. The contents and language should be suited to a wide circle of readers. The paper should be aimed at non-experts with a good all-round education. Font/size Calibri 11, length min. 4500 and max. 6000 characters with spaces, in English or Norwegian.

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