User guide BGS Coastal Vulnerability Index version 1

Coastal vulnerability indexing is a GIS-based analysis tool for indicating multi-hazards and interdependencies within the coastal zone of Great Britain (GB). The mainland of Great Britain is surrounded by over 11 000 miles of coastline. It is a very diverse coastline both in terms of geology and geomorphology, ranging from the high chalk cliffs of Sussex to the flat expanses of The Wash and Morecambe Bay. The coast has been shaped by the continual forces of erosion from the wind, waves and tide and the characteristics and composition of the coastline dictate the degree of its vulnerability. The winter storms of 2013-14 starkly demonstrated the vulnerability of the GB coastline to erosion and overtopping but during media enquiries it became clear that a national picture of the sections of coastline susceptible to erosion didn’t exist. The Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) has been created to bring together a suite of data to fill this knowledge gap. With climate change forecasts of an increase in the frequency and intensity of winter storms, BGS has developed a coastal vulnerability index (CVI), drawing on existing BGS datasets and expertise, and we intend to work in collaboration with other organisations to help manage these changes in the future. The CVI will offer anyone with assets or an interest in the coastline around Great Britain access to easy-to use indexes linked to geohazard data. This will allow users to interpret potential interdependencies in terms of erosion, flooding, habitat and other vulnerabilities. Version 1 of the CVI represents the natural geological coastline (around the mainland of GB only) as if no coastal defences or made ground are present. Due to their complex geometry, the coastlines of N and W Scotland have not been included in version 1. This will be of particular value in areas where coastal defences are no longer maintained. Future versions of the CVI will include all coastal defences and made ground

User guide British Geological Survey Coastal Vulnerability Dataset (version 1)

This report describes the national scale BGS Coastal Vulnerability Dataset. The methods used to create the dataset have been critically assessed and its fitness for purpose determined by specialists in BGS. This document outlines the background to why the dataset was created, its potential uses and gives a brief description of the content. Technical information regarding the GIS and how the data was created is described and advice is provided on using the dataset

Slope dynamics project report : Holderness Coast - Aldbrough, survey & monitoring, 2001-2013

This report is a published product of an ongoing study by the British Geological Survey (BGS) of the coastal change at Aldbrough on the Holderness coast, East Riding of Yorkshire, UK. The test site at Aldbrough has been selected as one of the BGS Landslide Observatories because it is representative of the high rates of coastal recession along this stretch of the east coast. The Aldbrough Landslide Observatory is operated under the BGS ‘Slope Dynamics’ task within the BGS’s ‘Landslide’ project of the ‘Shallow Geohazards and Risk’ team. As well as providing new insights with respect to the volumetric rates of recession and the near surface processes, it is a focus for the trialling of new surface and subsurface monitoring technologies. The establishment of the Aldbrough observatory and the initial research findings are reported in a series of reports in addition to this report. These are: Hobbs, P.R.N., Jones, L.D., & Kirkham, M.P. (2015) Slope Dynamics project report: Holderness Coast – Aldbrough: Drilling & Instrumentation, 2012-2015. British Geological Survey, Internal Report No IR/15/001. Hobbs, P.R.N., Kirkham, M.P. & Morgan, D.J.R. (2016) Geotechnical laboratory testing of glacial deposits from Aldbrough, Phase 2 boreholes. British Geological Survey, Open Report No. OR/15/056. Whilst this report is focused on the survey and monitoring programme, it should be read in conjunction with the reports listed above, which provide further details on drilling and instrumentation and the geotechnical properties of the underlying geology. A series of reports will follow presenting the updated survey and monitoring reports, and their publication will be announced through the BGS project web page. Readers of these reports will probably also be interested in the context for this research, which can be found in: Hobbs, P.R.N., Pennington, C.V.L., Pearson, S.G., Jones, L.D., Foster, C., Lee, J.R., Gibson, A. (2008) Slope Dynamics Project Report: the Norfolk Coast (2000-2006). British Geological Survey, Open Report No. OR/08/018

Cosmological parameters from Galaxy Clusters: an Introduction

This lecture is an introduction to cosmological tests with clusters of galaxies. Here I do not intend to provide a complete review of the subject, but rather to describe the basic procedures to set up the fitting machinery to constrain cosmological parameters from clusters, and to show how to handle data with a critical insight. I will focus mainly on the properties of X-ray clusters of galaxies, showing their success as cosmological tools, to end up discussing the complex thermodynamics of the diffuse intracluster medium and its impact on the cosmological tests.Comment: 32 pages, 16 figures, conference proceedings for the 3rd Aegean Summer School, Chios, 26 September - 1 October, 200

Cosmology with clusters of galaxies

In this Chapter I review the role that galaxy clusters play as tools to constrain cosmological parameters. I will concentrate mostly on the application of the mass function of galaxy clusters, while other methods, such as that based on the baryon fraction, are covered by other Chapters of the book. Since most of the cosmological applications of galaxy clusters rely on precise measurements of their masses, a substantial part of my Lectures concentrates on the different methods that have been applied so far to weight galaxy clusters. I provide in Section 2 a short introduction to the basics of cosmic structure formation. In Section 3 I describe the Press--Schechter (PS) formalism to derive the cosmological mass function, then discussing extensions of the PS approach and the most recent calibrations from N--body simulations. In Section 4 I review the methods to build samples of galaxy clusters at different wavelengths. Section 5 is devoted to the discussion of different methods to derive cluster masses. In Section 6 I describe the cosmological constraints, which have been obtained so far by tracing the cluster mass function with a variety of methods. Finally, I describe in Section 7 the future perspectives for cosmology with galaxy clusters and the challenges for clusters to keep playing an important role in the era of precision cosmology.Comment: 49 pages, 19 figures, Lectures for 2005 Guillermo Haro Summer School on Clusters, to appear in "Lecture notes in Physics" (Springer

Analysis of the Hollin Hill Landslide, Low Mowthorpe, North Yorkshire : field reconnaissance survey and proposed survey recommendations

This report is a result of a study by the British Geological Survey (BGS) investigating a landslide complex at Hollin Hill, Low Mowthorpe in North Yorkshire. The report provides an initial appraisal of a slope, and the proposed survey to be carried out in the autumn of 2006

A walkover survey of the Oxwich Bay landslide

A walk over survey was carried out on the 1st January 2010 on a landslide that occurred within a disused quarry at Oxwich Bay on the Gower Peninsula, South Wales. The landslide was classified as a rock fall, approximately 50 metres in length and 30 metres in width. The slide material consisted of large (up to 6 metres x 6 metres) blocks of limestone from the Oxwich Head Limestone Formation. The cause of the slope failure was probably due to water penetrating fractures in the limestone cliff. During periods of cold weather, this water has frozen and then thawed and expanded, increasing the in situ stress acting in the fracture and causing the rock to fail

Landslide research at the British Geological Survey : capture, storage and interpretation on a national and site-specific scale

Landslide research at the British Geological Survey (BGS) is carried out through a number of activities, including surveying, database development and real-time monitoring of landslides. Landslide mapping across the UK has been carried out since BGS started geological mapping in 1835. Today, BGS geologists use a combination of remote sensing and ground-based investigations to survey landslides. The development of waterproof tablet computers (BGS·SIGMAmobile), with inbuilt GPS and GIS for field data capture provides an accurate and rapid mapping methodology for field surveys. Regional and national mapping of landslides is carried out in conjunction with site-specific monitoring, using terrestrial LiDAR and differential GPS technologies, which BGS has successfully developed for this application. In addition to surface monitoring, BGS is currently developing geophysical ground-imaging systems for landslide monitoring, which provide real-time information on subsurface changes prior to failure events. BGS's mapping and monitoring activities directly feed into the BGS National Landslide Database, the most extensive source of information on landslides in Great Britain. It currently holds over 14 000 records of landslide events. By combining BGS's corporate datasets with expert knowledge, BGS has developed a landslide hazard assessment tool, GeoSure, which provides information on the relative landslide hazard susceptibility at national scale