Dear Ryan, please receive this open letter to the organizer of the tailings dam round robin exercise. It explains our position on the round robin exercise you have promoted. As you know we enthusiastically adhered to your round robin proposal although we found a bit odd that such an exercise would be led by a consultant, thus not an impartial entity. Very quickly we started asking for more data, as the knowledge base seemed rather generic. We were not surprised…
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During the first couple decades of our professional life we worked extensively with Landslides risk assessment and monitoring in the European Alps. Most sites were in Switzerland and Italy. At the beginning “risk” was not yet the buzz-word it became later. Clients and governments were seeing hazards impinging on population and infrastructure like transportation, hydropower and bulk-storage facilities. Engineering “repairs” were the most obvious path. Nevertheless, back in 1997 Riskope’s founder Franco Oboni participated in a IUGS workshop in Honolulu. The…
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We are very pleased to see the notion of societal risk acceptability in the Canadian House of Commons, emerge publicly through the records. It is indeed a rare occurrence that information on our work is made public, due to the strict NDAs we sign with our clients. Actually, Mr. Chris Apps, Director, Lands and Resources at Kitselas First Nation, reported on Riskope’s work (see the section at 1655 in the record). Our findings were used to bring positive changes to…
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