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GSA TODAY | NOVEMBER 2016 Scott A. Anderson Solid as a Rock: How Engineering Geology Relates to
Transportation Asset Management
was named the Richard H. Jahns
Distinguished Lecturer for 2016 Highway systems were built over a short period of time and to
–2017. This lectureship was jointly an envisioned design life that is expiring. Owners of transporta-
established in 1988 by the Association tion infrastructure are finding a pressing need to get the most of
of Environmental & Engineering what they have and to build new inventory with this kind of
Geologists (AEG) and the thought in mind. This requires strategies for management but it
Environmental and Engineering also requires a clear look at what type of performance is expected,
Division of the Geological Society of and what is actually needed. Settlement, heave, slope movements,
America (GSA) to increase student longevity under the influence of scour, and corrosion are some of
awareness about applied geology. the ways this performance can be measured for structures of soil
and rock. Change happens, and relatively few things are “solid as
Anderson is the Geotechnical Engineering Technical Services a rock.”
team manager for the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA)
Resource Center. He leads a national team of geotechnical engi- Future Opportunities for Site and Event Characterization
neers that assist state and local transportation agencies through Using Remote Sensing and Social Media
technical assistance, training, and deployment of new technolo-
gies. Prior to joining FHWA, he worked in positions from staff The stereoscope and planimeter were once the office tools of
geologist to senior consulting engineer and landslide technology the engineering geologist, just as the Brunton compass and hand
leader for a major A/E design firm and spent four years as an level were in the field. The planimeter, Brunton, and hand level
assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii. all allowed for measurements to be made, which was good, but
He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering geology the stereoscope allowed visualizing more than could be seen with
from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado State the naked eye, and that was great. Today, remote sensing tech-
University, and master’s and doctorate degrees in civil engineering nologies help with all of this, and the engineering geologist needs
from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a licensed to be as versed in them as they once were with stereoscopes and
engineer and practicing engineering geologist with over 30 years Bruntons. Platforms are well established and yet still have tremen-
of experience and approximately 100 publications and invited dous untapped potential. Skills for back-calculating what must
presentations. He has grown and lived in many places along a have happened based on evidence left after an event will always be
general path from Boston to Honolulu and now makes his home valuable, but so will skills for back-calculating based on comments,
in Colorado, where he enjoys all of the outdoor time he can get. images, and videos posted by the public. Where once we could
only imagine what happened, now we can often see it. Beyond the
Interested institutions can contact Anderson at scott.anderson excitement of this, there is the potential to learn even more about
@dot.gov to give one or more of the following lectures: earth processes.
Natural Hazards, Risk, and the Resilience of Transportation Technical Observations from the 2014 Oso (SR 530) Landslide
Infrastructure Reconnaissance
Natural hazards pose a risk to transportation infrastructure The Oso Landslide struck the community of Oso, Washington,
that’s often tied to geology. Whether the hazard is from weather USA, on Saturday, 22 March 2014, at approximately 10:37 a.m. on
and climate, gravity and slopes, or seismic activity, for example, a clear, sunny day. It initiated within an approximately 200-m-high
the expression of the hazard in terms of its potential consequence (650 ft) hillslope composed of unconsolidated glacial and collu-
is a function of geologic setting. Not surprisingly, the practice of vial deposits and transitioned to a catastrophic debris flow that
engineering geology has long had a focus on hazard characteriza- rapidly inundated a neighborhood and, traveling more than a
tion. This is good because hazard is an important input to risk, kilometer (0.6 mi), crossed a state highway (SR 530). Forty-three
and risk is what needs to be measured and managed for the people in the neighborhood and on the highway lost their lives.
emerging need to optimize performance of transportation infra- There are lessons of all types to be learned from this disaster and
structure. One way of managing risk is through building in resil- these lessons will be explored—with special emphasis on the
ience to natural hazards. How to do this, and to what extent it technical ones.
should be done, are important questions that open up newer areas
of practice for the engineering geologist.
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