A first-of-its-kind center housed at the 91探花 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鈥檚 happening underwater.

“Before RAPID, it was ad hoc, DIY or sometimes BYO (bring your own) equipment to a reconnaissance mission,” said facility director , a 91探花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 91探花 engineer who analyzed the event鈥檚 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.

鈥淭here 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,鈥� said senior author , a 91探花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 91探花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.

鈥淪imply 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,鈥� said first author , who did the work for his 91探花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. 聽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 鈥� don鈥檛 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鈥檚 age and gender, didn鈥檛 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.

鈥淭his is a message of hope,鈥� Wartman said. 鈥淲hat 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.鈥�

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 91探花 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 91探花 researchers got to work.

The team developed a project that scans the streets every few weeks to document what’s happening around the city 鈥� 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 91探花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 鈥� and the rich data they contain 鈥� 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.聽Credit: 91探花

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 鈥� such as restaurants, hospitals, schools, parks and museums 鈥� 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 鈥� 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 鈥� such as human faces and vehicle license plates 鈥� 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 鈥� 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: 聽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 , 91探花affiliate assistant professor of sociology and director of the 91探花.

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 91探花Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering have won a for a feature magazine article they co-wrote on geologic hazard risks to聽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 鈥� AM&P for short 鈥� 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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91探花Medicine’s Mary-Claire King, Peter Byers honored by American Society of Human Genetics

The American Society of Human Genetics has honored two 91探花Medicine faculty members 鈥� and 鈥� 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 91探花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 91探花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 鈥渞ockfall activity index,鈥� the system is based on the powerful abilities of light detection and ranging, or LIDAR technology. It should expedite and add precision to what鈥檚 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鈥檚 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 91探花, Oregon State University and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. in Engineering Geology.

鈥淭ransportation agencies and infrastructure providers are increasingly seeking ways to improve the reliability and safety of their systems, while at the same time reducing costs,鈥� said , associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at the 91探花, and corresponding author of the study.

鈥淎s a low-cost, high-resolution landslide hazard assessment system, our rockfall activity index methodology makes a significant step toward improving both protection and efficiency.鈥�

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.

鈥淩ockfalls are a huge road maintenance issue,鈥� said co-author , an associate professor of geomatics at Oregon State University.

鈥淧acific 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.鈥�

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 鈥渆nergy release鈥� 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.

鈥淭his 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,鈥� 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 UW-based , the National Science Foundation and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Co-authors are , a 91探花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 91探花, a new Post-Disaster, Rapid Response Research聽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. 聽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 91探花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 91探花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 鈥� 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 鈥� 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 UW, a computer-automated virtual reality environment will also allow people to walk into a room and 鈥渟ee鈥� 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:

鈥淭he idea is that you can use the facility to collect data 鈥� either through our staff or our training 鈥� 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,鈥� Wartman said.

One of the center鈥檚 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鈥檛 overburdened or supplies can get to where they need to go.

鈥淭hese computational models require real-world data to be calibrated and validated,鈥� said , 91探花associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and one of the center鈥檚 principal investigators. 鈥淧ost-disaster data will help us improve the various models necessary for understanding losses from natural disasters.鈥�

, a research scientist in human centered design and engineering and the third 91探花principal investigator, will lead the development of social science and citizen science tools. 鈥淯nderstanding 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,鈥� 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: 聽 91探花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 91探花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鈥檚 current work includes NSF-funded research projects to develop seismic load-resisting systems and to on the Pacific Northwest.

The grant follows NSF鈥檚 $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 鈥� the society’s highest prize for engineering geology 鈥� 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.

91探花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.

, a 91探花professor of Earth and space sciences, and , a 91探花associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, sat down last week to look back at the past year.

What were those first days like for you, as reports were coming out about the mudslide?

DM: I remember scrambling for information. The people who really knew what was going on were onsite, but they had their hands full and they didn’t need to be bothered by the media. So that role fell to people like Joe and I, who were at a bit of a distance, but who had some expertise. Yet we didn’t have direct access to the slide because we weren’t part of the rescue and then recovery efforts. I spent a lot of time simply trying to figure out what happened, so I could communicate without making major errors.

JW: For me, it was trying to get a sense of whether there was anything to the initial human loss estimates. It’s hard for us in a developed nation to think that there can be that kind of large loss of life from a single event. Those are numbers you read about in Afghanistan or Central America or Latin America, where they don’t necessarily have the same land-use controls. Often, the loss estimates go down very quickly as people continue to show up to community centers, and often the initial estimates are quite exaggerated. But that wasn’t the case here.

Were there any geological clues that this might happen?

JW: I remember having a very strong reaction the first time I looked at the Lidar data. You can immediately see there are other large-scale landsides in the immediate vicinity of Oso. It was striking, and it was also upsetting to see as the aftermath was playing out, because you could clearly see a history of this kind of event at that location.

DM: If you look at the hazard maps that were available to the residents of Steelhead Drive before the 2014 landslide, they all showed a landslide on the valley wall across the river, the old Hazel landslide. There was no landslide hazard depicted on the valley bottom where people were living, yet we know that the risk from landslides is not just from where they are, but how far they may go and how likely that is. Without such information people can’t make fully informed decisions about whether they’re willing to buy a house in a landslide-prone area.

JW: When I talk with people from the Oso area, I’ve been surprised to hear how many people say they simply weren’t aware that anything like this could have happened. So I think there’s some breakdown there, because the scientists who look at the Lidar data can in an instant realize that it certainly falls within the realm of possibility, and has happened before in the not-so-distant past.

How would you describe the past year?

JW: In some ways it seems like it’s been much, much longer than a year. I think we compressed a lot of science into a very short amount of time. Sometimes the investigation takes a couple of years, but many basic questions about this event were answered quickly. Yet there’s so much work to do in terms of informing the public. People have important questions about landslide hazard risk, and I can’t keep up with all of the inquiries.

What was it like investigating a geological disaster so close to home?

JW: All of the disasters I’ve studied have occurred in locations I’ve had to fly to. This is the first time I’ve worked on a geological disaster where I’ve met the survivors, or family members of survivors, and it’s become much more personal.

DM: Most other big disasters, like Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, we’ve gotten there years afterwards when it’s not so fresh and so raw. And it’s farther from home. Working on the site itself was a mix of intriguing geology on the upper half of the site, where we were trying to figure out the pieces of the puzzle of how this thing happened, but then going down to the bottom half where the community had been. It was devastating to find a basketball, kids’ shoes and pieces of houses. It was hard being there, walking around knowing what happened.

Are other areas at risk?

JW: Are there other Osos? I just don’t think we know. Our approach to landslide hazard mapping has been piecemeal. Without a single authority charged to look at this, people have applied different standards, and there is no single hazard map. That lack of a larger overseeing entity has resulted in this piecemeal patchwork.

DM: One of the big questions is: How many other areas are there on the west slope of the Cascades where that same combination of river incision into glacial sediment could play out? I’m not aware of any systematic effort to go through and survey and look at that.

Do you see any policy responses to Oso?

JW: It’s undoubtedly had a short-term impact. The question that remains is what the shelf life is of Oso in terms of whether it will result in any meaningful changes down the road for new programs, or funding for landslide hazards. I can be pessimistic. It’s the 10-year anniversary of the landslide. Three children were living there in 2005, many of them were killed, and now it’s estimated that 30 children are living there.

DM: We’ve had communities moving farther up into the mountains, not just in this state, but all around the country. If you take a landside like Oso and it happens in a wilderness area, it’s a geological oddity. If it happens in a subdivision, it’s an absolute catastrophe. […] The funding for our state’s landslide program is for one half-time employee, and has been for some time. The SR530 commission recommended expanding the geological hazard and risk mapping in Washington state, and explicitly in our recommendation was to include the potential landslide zones and run-out zones. That is now advancing through the state legislature.

What is next? What would you like to see?

JW: Direct federal expenditures from Oso have been over $120 million. The cost to implement a landslide mapping program could be a fraction of that. With the availability of Lidar and the that would do it for the entire U.S., it’s now within our grasp to do hazard mapping in a cost-effective manner.

DM: For over the past decade, the annual funding for the USGS landslide program has been roughly the cost of sending two people to Afghanistan for a year. Yet what puts Americans in more harm, more directly, in more days of the year? It seems to me that when we think about where we are spending our money we should consider how we are not making it a priority to protect people at home.

Any closing thoughts?

JW: Over the last year you can’t help but be introspective about whether all the work you’re doing is, in the end, doing anything to reduce the occurrence of Oso-type events. One of the things that’s become much more apparent to me is just the importance of making sure the science doesn’t die on the vine. We need to be making sure it reaches the public and that the products of our work are understandable to the public.

DM: That Lidar data had been sitting around since 2003, for more than a decade. If we have great data and great techniques to analyze it, but if no one’s actually using that to go look systematically at the places where people may be in harm’s way and then conveying that information to the general public, then we build in a gulf between the state of knowledge and the state of practice. A key challenge is to close the gap between what we know how to do as a field, and what’s being done on the applied end, outside of the geological research community.

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For more information, contact Wartman at wartman@uw.edu or 206-685-4806 and Montgomery at 206-685-2560 or bigdirt@uw.edu. Note: Wartman is on travel and best reached via email.