Landslides cause an estimated in the United States. Those numbers could easily increase as housing needs spur development in landslide-prone areas, and as climate change , which are often a trigger. Despite the threat, there has never been a systematic, nationwide accounting of who is most at risk from landslides.

The new is the first resource to map building-level landslide risk for the entire U.S. The database, developed by ���ϳԹ��� researchers, rates 128 million buildings by landslide susceptibility, and uses socioeconomic data to assess residents’ vulnerability to the dangers and disruptions caused by landslides. 

According to the analysis, roughly 6.5 million people live in landslide-prone regions; most of those people are concentrated in Appalachia and along the West Coast. Urban residents of landslide-prone properties tended to be more affluent and resilient, whereas rural residents in at-risk areas tended to be less resourced and more vulnerable to the impacts of a landslide.

The results give government agencies and emergency managers a way to prioritize resources for landslide education and mitigation, and can also help individual residents understand their own risk.

“As a community of landslide researchers, we have spent almost all of our time studying the physical geography of landslides,” said , a ���ϳԹ��� professor of civil and environmental engineering and the co-creator of the database. “But we never considered the human geography. Now we can answer some very important questions about who is exposed.”

Wartman and his team in Earth’s Future. They also along with user-friendly tools to help nonscientists browse the results. 

To create the new database, the research team blended together multiple huge datasets: a map of terrain and landslide susceptibility made by the United States Geological Survey; inventories of building footprints and occupancy information from the Overture Maps Foundation and the Army Corps of Engineers, respectively; and socioeconomic data from the Census Bureau. The census dataset included information like income, disability, vehicle access, housing condition and other factors that impact the ability of communities to respond to disasters.

“This effort was much more than just merging massive datasets,” said lead author , a ���ϳԹ��� doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering. “The real work was the careful curation required to turn the incredibly rich data available in the U.S. into an accurate, usable tool for everyone from decision makers to the public.”

The analysis revealed that while almost 20% of the land in the country is prone to landslides, that area is home to just 2% of the population, or about 6.5 million people. Of those highest-risk residents, 80% live either on or near the West Coast or in Appalachia; West Virginia emerged as the state with the largest share of at-risk residents.

“Those concentrations were surprising,” Wartman said. “In a sense, it’s good news, because it shows landslide risk to be a localized hazard, which makes it more practical and affordable to address.”

The results also reveal an unexpected urban-rural divide. In rural areas across the country, the most landslide-prone communities tend to face greater economic constraints and are thus more vulnerable than the overall population. Residents there often have fewer resources to prepare for or recover from a landslide, for example, and are more likely to live in structures far from emergency services.

But in urban areas, Wartman said, “all of that flips on its head.”

Landslide-prone areas in cities tend to be highly valued hillside neighborhoods with desirable views, so the exposed populations are often better resourced. When a landslide occurs, these residents typically have greater financial capacity to recover from the damage.

Because of those complex regional and socioeconomic differences, the researchers warn against a “one-size-fits-all” approach to landslide policy. Instead, they recommend mitigation strategies that are specific to each region’s realities. In Appalachia, that might mean early warning systems that can reach a widely dispersed population, whereas in Seattle or San Francisco it might mean regulations that discourage building on unsafe slopes.

Wartman hopes that researchers and regulators will use the dataset to study landslide risk and develop new ways to protect residents across the country. He also sees it as an educational tool for anyone to learn about landslides and assess their own risk.

“People email me because they want to know if their homes are at risk, and I haven’t had a resource to point them to,” Wartman said. “That was a big part of the motivation for this work. Now I have something straightforward to offer them.”

, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University, is a co-author of the research.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Wartman at wartman@uw.edu.

A first-of-its-kind center housed at the ���ϳԹ��� has received a from the National Science Foundation.

The offers a way for researchers to get their hands on state-of-the-art equipment to study the effects of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes. This facility contains more than 100 unique instruments, including a variety of drones and a remote-controlled boat that uses sonar to scan what’s happening underwater.

“Before RAPID, it was ad hoc, DIY or sometimes BYO (bring your own) equipment to a reconnaissance mission,” said facility director , a ���ϳԹ��� professor in the civil and environmental engineering department. “The few people who had reconnaissance instruments, such as lidar, tended to be very overburdened in the sense that they were asked to participate in numerous missions. It didn’t leave space and room for others to join.”

Since opening its doors in 2018, the RAPID Facility has transformed how data is gathered, processed and saved in the aftermath of natural disasters. So far, this center has supported 80 field missions around the world, including helping investigate and using a to develop new methods to assess the structural integrity of buildings after an earthquake.

Use the interactive visualization below to explore all 80 of the RAPID Facility’s deployments:

The NSF renewal grant provides this center with four additional years of funding and a 30% budget increase to advance the natural hazards reconnaissance field through new initiatives.

The RAPID Facility is part of a larger network of experimental research facilities at seven universities across the country. These centers were founded in 2016 through the NSF’s program.

“We have everything we need to start making even more significant breakthroughs in years to come,” Wartman said. “I am very optimistic about what will come from the RAPID. Even in the first few months of the renewal, I’ve seen exciting uses of data and innovations in reconnaissance.”

For more information, contact RAPID Facility staff at uwrapid@uw.edu.

The March 2014 landslide in Oso, Washington, about 55 miles northeast of Seattle, became the deadliest landslide event in United States history. Forty-three people died and 49 homes and structures were destroyed.

A ���ϳԹ��� engineer who analyzed the event’s aftermath began to investigate the circumstances that can make landslides so deadly. The resulting study shows that certain human actions increase the chance of surviving a devastating event, and suggests simple behavioral changes could save more lives than expensive engineering solutions.

The open-access , published in the October issue of GeoHealth, suggests key actions that range from opening doors and windows to continuing to move and make noise if you do get buried.

“There are in fact some really simple, cost-effective measures that can be taken that can dramatically improve the likelihood that one will survive a landslide,” said senior author , a ���ϳԹ��� professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Worldwide, landslides cause on average more than 4,000 deaths a year recently, with about 25 to 50 of those deaths occurring each year in the U.S. These events may become more frequent as wildfires fueled by warmer temperatures can leave slopes bare and more vulnerable to slides.

Wartman and a ���ϳԹ��� graduate student compiled and analyzed records of 38 landslides that affected occupied buildings. Most of the data came from the U.S., but it included landslides from around the world for which there were detailed records.

The authors recorded the geologic details of each landslide, as well as the reports from survivors of the events. They used newspaper articles, scientific papers, medical examiner reports and other documents to produce a detailed catalog of fatalities caused by landslides hitting occupied buildings. The events, spanning from 1881 to 2019, included the Oso mudslide and the , as well as events in Bangladesh, the Philippines, China, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.

Their analysis showed behavioral factors, such as a having an awareness of local landslide hazards and moving to a higher floor of a building during an event, had the strongest association with survival.

“Simply by being on an upper floor, an individual can increase their odds of survival by up to a factor of twelve. This is a powerful finding that we need to consider when we design the layout and vertical access routes in homes,” said first author , who did the work for his ���ϳԹ��� doctorate in civil and environmental engineering and is now a lecturer in the department.

The researchers found some behaviors, despite being performed by only a small number of people, often save lives.  According to their results, those actions are:

Before an event

• Be informed about potential hazards, from hazard maps or other sources
• Talk to people who have experienced these events
• Move areas of high occupancy, such as bedrooms, upstairs or to the downhill side of a building

During an event

• Move away from the threat — don’t approach an active landslide
• Escape vertically by moving upstairs or even on countertops to avoid being swept away
• Identify and relocate to interior, ideally unfurnished, areas of a building that offer more protection
• Open downhill doors and windows to let debris escape

After an event

• If caught in landslide debris, continue to move and make noise to alert rescuers

Many things the authors predicted would be important, including the size or the intensity of landslide events, made little difference to the death toll for landslides below about 20 feet depth. Similarly, the distance between a building and the landslide slope, or an inhabitant’s age and gender, didn’t make a big difference to their survival.

The results suggest practical ways to lower the number of lives lost to landslides in the United States, Wartman said. He hopes the information can be incorporated in education and community awareness programs.

“This is a message of hope,” Wartman said. “What this work suggests is that a modest investment put toward social science, policy and education could have a very marked effect in protecting people from landslides.”

Residents who want to know if they are vulnerable to landslides can contact a local agency, such as the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, to learn more about local risks. Federal is pending to make this information more easily accessible across the United States, Wartman said.

The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Wartman at wartman@uw.edu or Pollock at wpollock@uw.edu.

Adapted from an by Jack Lee for AGU Eos.

As the city of Seattle shut down in March 2020 to try to slow the spread of COVID-19, a group of ���ϳԹ��� researchers decided to track how the city would react.

Driving a pre-determined route around the city with a 360-degree camera, the team collected thousands of images, not unlike Google Street View. By doing this regularly over 15 months, they hope to literally map Seattle’s recovery. The route goes through economically diverse neighborhoods, passing businesses, schools, churches and hospitals. The project began in May and is expected to go through fall of 2021.

A computer program was developed to identify and sort objects like pedestrians, cars and buildings. Employing artificial intelligence to count objects from the massive collection of photos allows the images to be made into quantifiable data.

With these numbers, the study hopes to answer questions such as: How many people are out and about at different points in time? Are restaurants open, and where? What kinds of vehicles are on the road?

Different neighborhoods may recover at different rates. Researchers hope they’ll get insight into what factors make communities resilient and how to better prepare for potential future pandemics and other disasters.

More on the Seattle Street View Campaign here.

As the city of Seattle shut down in March 2020 to try to slow the spread of COVID-19, a group of ���ϳԹ��� researchers got to work.

The team developed a project that scans the streets every few weeks to document what’s happening around the city — answering questions such as: Are people outside? Are restaurants open? This project, which began in May and will continue until at least fall of 2021, collects images of how Seattle has reacted to the pandemic and what recovery looks like. This creates a massive dataset that documents what was happening at any particular point in time. The researchers hope the data will help answer questions about what makes a city resilient and how to better prepare for potential future pandemics and other disasters.

The team will present this project Oct. 1 at the through the ���ϳԹ��� School of Public Health.

“We talk about resilience a lot in disaster sciences. There are lots of theories about what makes a community resilient to natural hazards, but we don’t fully understand resilience to pandemics, partially because we just haven’t been through these events at this scale,” said co-lead researcher , an assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences. “This project provided us with an opportunity to see what’s important for resilience in this context. What are people doing? Where are they recreating? Are they following distancing and mask-wearing recommendations? And how do their activities change as the pandemic progresses?”

Video footage taken from the team’s first drive on May 1, 2020.

To track what’s happening in Seattle, the researchers drive a car with a camera similar to Google Street View on top throughout the city.

“This is an amazing tool for quickly gathering highly perishable data from across the city,” said co-lead researcher , a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “Unless we capture these scenes now, these sights — and the rich data they contain — will be lost forever. I can already see a significant difference between the May dataset and what’s happening now. For example, when we first drove past Harborview Medical Center, no one was present on the block. Now it’s beginning to look like it used to.”

The team captured this series of photos from outside Harborview Medical Center between June and August 2020. The June photo shows very few people in the area. In July, there are people waiting at the bus stop. By August, there are more people at the bus stop and the surrounding areas. Credit: ���ϳԹ���

The team’s route takes between eight and 11 hours to drive each time.

“We wanted the route to capture different aspects of the city — such as restaurants, hospitals, schools, parks and museums — and also make sure we had an equal representation across a variety of neighborhoods,” said co-lead researcher , a senior principal research scientist in the human centered design and engineering department.

The researchers try to start the drive at 8 a.m. on Friday, every few weeks, to maintain a consistent schedule, but it depends on weather, specifically the camera doesn’t work in the rain. They also drive on some Sundays to try to capture any variation between weekdays and weekends.

The Street-View-like camera creates huge datasets — each drive is turned into tens of thousands of images that make up an almost 2-terabyte file. So the researchers are developing algorithms to help them identify things such as cars, people and whether they are physically distancing in each frame. Identities — such as human faces and vehicle license plates — will be blurred.

“When people study disaster recovery, they often look at location data from smartphones or transaction data from debit or credit cards,” said co-lead researcher , an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering. “But these data points do not necessarily capture everyone in a community. By looking at our images, I hope we are creating a dataset that better represents all people who live and work in Seattle.”

Any insights gained from this project, such as how people respond to mask recommendations or which populations might need more resources, can help other cities better understand their own recovery trends the researchers said.

“People talk about this as a 100-year pandemic, because the last major pandemic was in 1918,” Errett said. “Now conditions are much different — we have increased population density, climate change and more. I don’t think we’re going to be waiting another hundred years. So whatever we can do to learn from this experience will help us develop better policies and plans for the future.”

Jaqueline Peltier, an operations specialist in civil and environmental engineering; , a doctoral student in industrial and systems engineering; Christopher Salazar, a master’s student in industrial and systems engineering; and Vanessa Yang, an undergraduate student in statistics and informatics, are also part of this project. This research is funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Errett at nerrett@uw.edu, Wartman at wartman@uw.edu, Miles at milessb@uw.edu and Choe at ychoe@uw.edu.

Grant number:  CMMI-2031119

Sociologist Elizabeth Litzler honored by national network promoting women in engineering

The Women in Engineering ProActive Network, or WEPAN, has given its 2020 Founders Award to , ���ϳԹ��� affiliate assistant professor of sociology and director of the ���ϳԹ��� .

The , one of several given annually, is given to a network member “who exemplifies the spirit of the WEPAN founders through her extraordinary long-term service to the organization.”

The network is a national professional society that uses research and best practices to promote the inclusion of women in the field of engineering. Its members work to connect advocates across North America to increase the “participation, retention and success of women and other under-represented groups in engineering from college to executive leadership.”

Litzler’s and other 2020 WEPAN awards will be presented at the network’s next annual conference, planned for January 2021.

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Article by Joseph Wartman, Will Pollock of civil and environmental engineering wins award from media group

Professor and doctoral student of the ���ϳԹ��� Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering have won a for a feature magazine article they co-wrote on geologic hazard risks to Syrian and other refugees.

Their non-technical article was titled “” and was published in November 2019 in the American Geophysical Union’s journal EOS. Wartman is the H.R. Berg Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering.

Association Media & Publishing — AM&P for short — gives out annual bronze, silver and gold EXCEL Awards for books, digital media, journals, magazines, newsletters, newspapers and promotional content. The awards recognize excellence and leadership in association media, publishing, marketing and communications.

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���ϳԹ��� Medicine’s Mary-Claire King, Peter Byers honored by American Society of Human Genetics

The American Society of Human Genetics has honored two ���ϳԹ��� Medicine faculty members — and — with 2020 awards.

King was chosen to receive the society’s 2020 , which recognizes “substantial and far-reaching scientific contributions to human genetics.” The award is named for one of the first American physicians to extensively research human genetics and hereditary diseases. The award comes with a $25,000 prize.

King is the American Cancer Society Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences, and an affiliate member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Network.

The society’s president, Anthony Wynshaw-Boris of Case Western University, praised King for providing insight into the existence of the gene she named , “and changed our understanding of cancer prevention and treatment.” from the ���ϳԹ��� Division of Medical Genetics.

The genetics society, also called ASHG, chose Byers for its 2020 , which is given annually for exemplary leadership and vision by promoting genetics and genomics knowledge in the broader scientific community.

The award, which comes with a $10,000 prize, recognizes the importance of Byers’ research on the molecular pathogenesis of inherited disorders of connective tissue, and for his leadership in “nearly all facets” of the society’s work. Byers has served as the society’s president and editor of its American Journal of Human Genetics. on the ���ϳԹ��� Division of Medical Genetics website.

The society was founded in 1948 and its 8,000 members include researchers, academics, clinicians, laboratory practice professionals, genetic counselors and nurses. The awards will be presented at the next annual meeting, to be held virtually and not yet scheduled.

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Pacific Northwest engineers have developed a new, automated technology to analyze the potential for rockfalls from cliffs onto roads and areas below, which should speed and improve this type of risk evaluation, help protect public safety and ultimately save money and lives.

Called a “rockfall activity index,” the system is based on the powerful abilities of light detection and ranging, or LIDAR technology. It should expedite and add precision to what’s now a somewhat subjective, time-consuming process to determine just how dangerous a cliff is to the people, vehicles, roads or structures below it.

This is a multimillion-dollar global problem, experts say, of significant concern to transportation planners.

It’s a particular concern in the Pacific Northwest with its many mountain ranges, heavy precipitation, erosion of steep cliffs and unstable slopes, and thousands of roads that thread their way through that terrain. The evaluation system now most widely used around the world, in fact, was developed by the Oregon Department of Transportation more than 25 years ago.

The new technology should improve on that approach, according to researchers who developed it from the ���ϳԹ���, Oregon State University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. in Engineering Geology.

“Transportation agencies and infrastructure providers are increasingly seeking ways to improve the reliability and safety of their systems, while at the same time reducing costs,” said , associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the ���ϳԹ���, and corresponding author of the study.

“As a low-cost, high-resolution landslide hazard assessment system, our rockfall activity index methodology makes a significant step toward improving both protection and efficiency.”

The new approach could replace the need to personally analyze small portions of a cliff at a time, looking for cracks and hazards, with analysts sometimes even rappelling down it to assess risks. LIDAR analysis can map large areas in a short period, and allow data to be analyzed by a computer.

“Rockfalls are a huge road maintenance issue,” said co-author , an associate professor of geomatics at Oregon State University.

“Pacific Northwest and Alaskan highways, in particular, are facing serious concerns for these hazards. A lot of our highways in mountainous regions were built in the 1950s and 60s, and the cliffs above them have been facing decades of erosion that in many places cause at least small rockfalls almost daily. At the same time traffic is getting heavier, along with increasing danger to the public and even people who monitor the problem.”

The study, based on some examples in southern Alaska, showed the new system could evaluate rockfalls in ways that very closely matched the dangers actually experienced. It produces data on the “energy release” to be expected from a given cliff, per year, that can be used to identify the cliffs and roads at highest risk and prioritize available mitigation budgets to most cost-effectively protect public safety.

Tens of millions of dollars are spent each year in the U.S. on rock slope maintenance and mitigation.

“This should improve and speed assessments, reduce the risks to people doing them, and hopefully identify the most serious problems before we have a catastrophic failure,” Olsen said.

The technology is now complete and ready for use, researchers said, although they are continuing to develop its potential, possibly with the use of flying drones to expand the data that can be obtained.

This research was supported by the ���ϳԹ���-based , the National Science Foundation and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Co-authors are , a ���ϳԹ��� graduate in civil and environmental engineering now at McMillen Jacobs Associates in Seattle; graduate assistant Matthew O’Banion at OSU; and Keith Cunningham, research assistant professor of remote sensing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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For more information, contact Joe Wartman at wartman@uw.edu or 206-685-4806.

This release was adapted from an Oregon State University .

In the days and weeks following an earthquake or hurricane, precious data about how buildings, bridges, roads, slopes and people fared in the disaster may get lost forever if well-equipped researchers are not able to enter the field rapidly.

Unstable buildings get bulldozed without documentation of how they were damaged, making it difficult to assess how building codes might be improved. Weather washes away key clues that could help us build more resilient communities. Many households are displaced, and some businesses will close forever.

At the ���ϳԹ���, a new Post-Disaster, Rapid Response Research Facility funded by a $4.1 million National Science Foundation grant will provide necessary instrumentation and tools to collect and assess critical post-disaster data, with the goal of reducing physical damage and socio-economic losses from future events.  Part of a by the NSF’s Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure program, the RAPID Facility will make the data openly available to researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

“Often with rescue and response efforts, this very valuable data disappears really quickly,” said center director , a ���ϳԹ��� associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “By collecting this data in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, we can begin to understand what went wrong and why. This allows us to better prepare and take precautionary measures in advance of future events.”

The RAPID Facility, an interdisciplinary center that will be housed in the ���ϳԹ��� Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, will focus on two types of natural hazards: wind hazards, such as tornadoes and coastal storms, and earthquakes, which includes earthquake-induced ground failure and tsunamis. The center’s leadership team also includes faculty from the University of Florida, Oregon State University and Virginia Tech.

It will offer next-generation tools — laser scanning equipment, seismic instruments, mobile devices for social surveys and mixed-media recording, drones outfitted with cameras, sensors that can measure damage at the centimeter scale — and assistance to teams that can deploy in the aftermath of a disaster anywhere around the world. It will also offer training to communities who wish to conduct post-disaster investigations themselves, as well as assess the social costs of disasters.

The RAPID Facility will also create new software tools for transmitting, integrating, exploring and visualizing the complex data sets. These include mobile apps to assess structural damage in the field and a platform for mixed-media social data gathering. At the ���ϳԹ���, a computer-automated virtual reality environment will also allow people to walk into a room and “see” the disaster scene in three dimensions as if they were there. That technology was pioneered by partner Oregon State University, as the video below shows:

“The idea is that you can use the facility to collect data — either through our staff or our training — and then you can come to the center months later and recreate the field experience by walking through a damaged building or looking at how much a particular area flooded,” Wartman said.

One of the center’s main goals is to better inform mathematical models used to predict how much damage buildings, bridges, levees and other key infrastructure will suffer in a certain sized earthquake or storm. By using data from actual disasters to uncover flaws in the models, communities can better prepare for real-world eventualities.

For instance, models currently predict how bridges from Seattle to the Eastside would perform in earthquakes of differing magnitudes. If those turn out to be off target, emergency managers may not have the right plans in place to ensure that hospitals on one side of the lake aren’t overburdened or supplies can get to where they need to go.

“These computational models require real-world data to be calibrated and validated,” said , ���ϳԹ��� associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and one of the center’s principal investigators. “Post-disaster data will help us improve the various models necessary for understanding losses from natural disasters.”

, a research scientist in human centered design and engineering and the third ���ϳԹ��� principal investigator, will lead the development of social science and citizen science tools. “Understanding post-disaster social impacts and responses is one of the most challenging aspects of reconnaissance. The RAPID facility will provide unprecedented resources to innovate workflows and tools for systematic collection of qualitative and quantitative data for social scientists,” Miles said.

In addition to supporting researchers, the facility will enable citizens to use social media and mobile devices to crowdsource post-disaster data and build awareness about wind- and earthquake-related impacts.

The new center includes an interdisciplinary faculty team:  ���ϳԹ��� civil and environmental engineering professor will focus on structural and engineering analyses, Applied Physics Laboratory research scientist will lead software development, and Evans School of Public Policy professor will focus on data collection methods for social science.

The center builds on ���ϳԹ��� faculty expertise with post-disaster data collection and analysis. Wartman to collect data and document conditions following the 2014 Oso Landslide, the deadliest landslide in the history of the United States. Miles has conducted multiple socio-economic reconnaissance efforts, including an NSF-funded project to understand how businesses were impacted by Hurricane Isaac. Berman’s current work includes NSF-funded research projects to develop seismic load-resisting systems and to on the Pacific Northwest.

The grant follows NSF’s $40 million , announced in September 2015, which funds a network of shared research centers and resources at various universities across the nation. The goal is to reduce the vulnerability of buildings, tunnels, waterways, communication networks, energy systems and social groups in order to increase the disaster resilience of communities across the United States.

“Under NHERI, future discoveries will not only mitigate the impacts of earthquakes, but also will advance our ability to protect life and property from windstorms such as hurricanes and tornadoes,” said Joy Paushke, program director in NSF’s Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation.

For more information about the RAPID Facility, contact Wartman at wartman@uw.edu or 206-685-4806. For more information about today’s NSF announcement, .

The society announced this week that the — the society’s highest prize for engineering geology — will go to the seven authors of a published in July 2014 on the causes, behavior and potential implications of the slide, which killed 43 people. The report compiles findings of an that began just days after the disaster.

���ϳԹ��� faculty members , associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and , professor of Earth and space sciences, are among the co-authors of the award-winning paper. All are members of the , an organization funded by the National Science Foundation to collect data in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster or extreme event.

The Burwell Award is given each year to authors of a recently published paper that advances the principles or practices of environmental and engineering geology. It is named for Edward B. Burwell, Jr., the first chief geologist of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

This year’s citation recognizes the Oso report’s “comprehensive nature and high technical level,” while noting that the authors did an exceptional job summarizing the event and publishing the report quickly. The report was released on the four-month anniversary of the landslide.

“Events like the Oso landslide cause a scientific leap in applied geology,” the committee wrote. “The authors have decades of experience, which translated into the meticulous report capturing this extreme event. This is an outstanding publication, meeting the criteria of a publication that advances knowledge in the engineering geology field.”

“The award was a wonderful surprise,” Wartman said. “As a team, we put much work into the research under very challenging conditions, so it was deeply gratifying for us to receive this recognition from the professional community.”

The report found that the along the banks of the Stillaguamish River. As well as doing a forensic analysis of the event, the authors made recommendations on how to reduce future risks.

“Our hope is that by better understanding how this landslide disaster happened, it will help us prevent future tragedies,” Montgomery said. “We’re all deeply moved to be recognized for our efforts in this regard.”

The geological society’s Environmental & Engineering Geology Division will present the award in late September at the society’s annual meeting in Denver.

The other co-authors are Jeffrey R. Keaton at Amec Foster Wheeler in Los Angeles, Scott Anderson at the Federal Highway Administration in Colorado, Jean Benoit at the University of New Hampshire, John deLaChapelle at Golder Associates and Robert Gilbert at the University of Texas at Austin.

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For more information, contact Wartman at 206-685-4806 or wartman@uw.edu and Montgomery at 206-685-2560 or bigdirt@uw.edu.