Mosher, David C.

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University of New Brunswick: Centre for Digital Scholarship Journals

CONFERENCE REPORTIVth Canadian Conferenceon Geohazards: From Caus-es to ManagementIVe Conférence Canadiennesur les Géorisques: descauses à la gestionDavid C. MosherAtlantic Geoscience CentreGeological Survey of Canada1 Challenger DriveDartmouth, NS, Canada, B2Y 4A2 E-mail: dmosher@nrcan.gc.caA trip to Québec City is always wel-come. The Fourth Canadian Confer-ence on Geohazards, chaired byJacques Locat was held there from May20–24th, 2008. Jacques has a reputationfor being a wonderful host, so therewas much for which to look forward.Jacques’ co-conspirators included Didi-er Perret, Dominique Turmel, DenisDemers and Serge Leroueil as well asan army of keen students that Jacquesseems to always have available. Thisconference is the fourth in a series thatgrew out of an initiative of the Engi-neering Geology Division of the Cana-dian Geotechnical Society. The confer-ence goal was to establish the state ofknowledge regarding natural hazards inCanada, particularly those of geologi-cal origin, and to address relevantissues from processes, consequencesand also scientific and social aspects ofrisk management. Associated with theconference were “un atelier sur la géo-matique appliquée à l’analyse régionaledes aléas géologiques”, and a workshopon applications of InSAR techniquesfor monitoring geohazards. Followingthe conference, there was a field trip tolook at natural hazards and risk man-agement examples in the Charlevoixand Saguenay regions. Sadly, I did nothave the time to participate in theseevents.Conference presenters wereasked to submit extended abstracts wellin advance of the conference. As aresult, papers were published on-lineprior to the conference, and a 594 pagebook that included a CD of pdf fileswas provided to conference attendeesat registration. Submissions were most-ly Canadian but with contributionsfrom Europe as well. The conferenceitself was hosted in the PavillonAlphonse-Desjardins at the UniversitéLaval and consisted of 8 consecutivesessions over two days with each ses-sion featuring a keynote lecture. Therewas a concurrent poster session in thereception area; the coffee and treatsforcing attention to the posters. In awonderfully Canadian way, the lecturesand the articles, were in either Frenchor English, and the conference sup-plied an interpreter, broadcast througha headset, for those of us who are lan-guage-challenged!  The eight sessions attemptedto break the talks into Processes andMechanisms, Techniques and Methods,Case Histories, Inventories and Haz-ards, and Risk Assessment and Man-agement, but any categorization ofsuch a diversity of topics is relativelyarbitrary. Keynote lectures, which setthe tone for each session, included top-ics such as Prevention and attenuationof natural hazards by Michel Doré; Iceroads by Don Hayley; Earthquakes ineastern Canada by Maurice Lamon-tagne; Social considerations of naturaldisasters by Danielle Maltais; Processmodelling and GIS in hazard assess-ment by Derek Martin; Risk-basedland-use planning in snow avalancheterrain by David McClung; and Subma-rine mass-movements in Canada, byyours truly. Drawing on a relativelysmall community in Canada, topics atsuch a conference are bound to besomewhat disparate, which is unavoid-able. Topics covered included earth-quakes and tsunamis, rock and snowavalanches, submarine and subaeriallandslides, hazard processes and analyt-ic techniques, climate change and haz-ard impact, and gas hydrate dissocia-tion, as examples. This broad spec-trum of topics running in a single con-secutive forum can be viewed as a neg-ative for those focused within theirown field of study. Alternatively, suchdiversity also has the consequence ofleading to cross-discipline stimulationand increased awareness of parallelresearch and novel techniques.The conference proceedingsvolume, “Locat, J., Perret, D., Turmel,D., Demers, D., et Leroueil, S., 2008.Proceedings of the IVth Canadian Conferenceon Geohazards: From Causes toManagement. Presse de l’UniversitéLaval, Québec, 594 p.” consists of 71extended abstract submissions and is aquality product that represents a mile-stone summarizing much of the stateof research on geohazards in Canada.In addition, the conference organizersorchestrated media attention for theevent and a number of interviews wereconducted with the CBC, Radio-Cana-da, and CanWest Global. This publici-ty element is critical, I believe, for whatgood is all the research we conduct ongeohazards if we do not inform thepublic of our results in as manyforums as possible?  Ultimately, thisresearch can be used in public deci-sion-making to help prevent or to miti-gate the consequences of natural disas-ters.I cannot end a review of thisconference without mention of the2GEOSCIENCE CANADA Volume 35  Number 1 March 2008 3fabulous banquet put on by the organ-izers. In truly grand style, the multi-course banquet was held in the foyerof the Musée de la Civilisation.Between courses, while sipping onwonderful wine, a small musical groupsang operatic excerpts while touringamongst the tables. It was a combina-tion of cuisine and culture that reflectsthe Québécois joie de vivre and makesme envious of the fortunate residentsof that province.

IVth Canadian Conference on Geohazards: From Causes to Management IVe Conféference Canadienne sur les Géorisques: des causes à la gestion

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IVth Canadian Conference on Geohazards: From Causes to Management IVe Conféference Canadienne sur les Géorisques: des causes à la gestion

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