Time for another Weekend Catch-Up Post, or Weekend CUP. I’ve got a mix of field case histories, useful tools, and a little forensic engineering from ancient Athens. Here are a few links worth a look with your coffee.
Public drone video as rockfall evidence
Two Greek rockfall case studies show how publicly posted drone footage can help reconstruct terrain and back-analyze rockfall paths. The practical appeal is preserving evidence that might disappear during cleanup, although scale and image quality still limit what can be inferred.
Tracy Arm’s landslide-generated tsunami
The USGS account of the 2025 Tracy Arm event is worth revisiting for what it says about unstable slopes above glacier-fed fjords. The agency warns that further failures from the exposed scar could produce additional local waves, a continuing concern for people using the water below.
Helical piles get Alaska boardwalks back in service
A CHANCE case study on rebuilding remote Alaska boardwalks puts access and installation logistics at the center of foundation selection. It’s a supplier’s account, but a useful example of why getting equipment and materials to the site can matter as much as the foundation detail.
Random fields that follow the ground
Slide2’s spatial-variability update lets modeled variability follow inclined geology and incorporate measured site data. Those seem like useful improvements, provided the underlying assumptions deserve as much attention as the resulting plots.
El Niño doesn’t mean the same landslide response everywhere
A global study of El Niño and landslide exposure found that the relationship varies considerably by region. The paper is from 2021, but the reminder is still useful: a broad climate outlook needs local rainfall and ground conditions before it becomes meaningful guidance for a particular slope.
A Skye road repair built around drainage
Highland Council’s account of reopening a landslide-blocked road near Uig includes debris removal, water diversion, drainage improvements, and rock armour. It’s a modest project, but probably closer to everyday geohazard work than many of the megaprojects that make the news.
Comparing foundation carbon one project at a time
An Abertay University project with RADIX developed a whole-life carbon calculator for screw-pile and concrete alternatives. The two examples favored screw piles, but I’d be more interested in the comparison assumptions than in treating either material as the automatic winner.
Earthquake clues in the Acropolis walls and nearby rockfalls
A conference paper on the Acropolis of Athens combines damage to historic walls with evidence from a nearby rock detachment to investigate past earthquake shaking. The analysis gets fairly deep in the weeds, but using different damaged features to piece together an old event is an intriguing forensic approach.
Finding the piling projects that came before yours
The Federation of Piling Specialists’ project map brings earlier piling work into a geographic view. Knowing who worked nearby could be a useful starting point for finding relevant experience, even though the next site still needs its own investigation.
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