Category: Jahns Lectures
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Rock Mechanics, Geomechanics, Rock Engineering: What’s It All About (and what are the career opportunities)?
Rock mechanics, which is related to geomechanics and rock engineering, is an exciting applied geology topic that is central to geological, mining, civil, and petroleum engineering. It is about how and why rocks fail, at both the field scale (rock masses), as well as laboratory, and with important applications to surface slopes, underground excavations, and…
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Everyday Geospatial: New Technologies and Methods that Anyone Can Afford for 3D Field Scanning, Point Cloud Processing, Rock Mass Characterization, and Slope Stability
Geospatial includes remote sensing 3D imaging technologies such as Lidar, photogrammetry, and multispectral and thermal imaging. These technologies can produce high resolution 3D point clouds, from which point cloud processing software is used to extract detailed and in some cases automated rock mass characterization and slope stability outputs. When I started in this field in…
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Why is that Unstable-Looking Rock Slope Still Standing, and When Can We Expect It to Fail: a gentle introduction to time-dependent rock fracturing and rock bridges
Rock slope stability and rockfall are very interesting subjects, and traditionally involves terms like plane and wedge failure, joint friction angle, pore pressure, freeze-thaw. We also use terms like factor of safety and probability of failure. A term often missing in traditional slope stability is time: when will the slope fail, or how will the…
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Innovative Monitoring and Characterization Technologies (with the help of AI) for Combatting Geologic/Hydrologic Hazards Associated with Climate Change
Monitoring and characterization of natural and manmade geologic environments are important aspects of applied geology, and can include monitoring water flow or rock movement, or characterizing the condition of a rock slope or debris flow path. I am currently involved with utilizing neural networks to develop some new monitoring and characterization strategies to help combat…
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Entrepreneurship in Applied Geology: Why your next career move could be an innovative small business startup
This is a great time to start an innovative geo-based small business. First of all, the occurrence of geologic and hydrologic hazards around the world is rapidly increasing, requiring creative thinking and the rapid development of new useful tools and methods, for which a small startup is well suited. Secondly, technologies that could form the…