The 2nd Mumolade Workshop, Nottingham, June 2013

The 2nd MUMOLADE workshop took place at the University of Nottingham between 10 and 18 of June, 2013. Followed the Workshop in Grenoble and Winter School at the ETHZ in 2012, an advanced scientific training was provided to the 15 fellows of the MUMOLADE project in this workshop. 13 well-known lecturers of renowned universities and industry accepted the invitation from the organizers to present their work on theoretical and experimental aspects of landslides and debris flow, engineering project practices in prediction and protection measures.

The scientific part covered the following subjects:

  • Multi-Scale      Modelling of Granular Systems, by Prof Ugur Tuzun (Oxford University) / Dr      Paul Langston (University of Nottingham) / Dr Xia Li (University of      Nottingham)
  • Climate      effects on slopes: field observations - Advances in Testing Unsaturated      soil, by Prof David Toll (Durham University)
  • Engineering      practices in Hong Kong, by Dr. Matthew Free (ARUP)
  • 1g      physical modelling of laboratory-scale granular debris flows; Geotechnical      centrifuge modelling of debris flows: advantages and challenges, by Dr      Elisabeth Bowman (Sheffield University)
  • Identification,      classification and characterisation of offshore landslides and runout, by      Dr Mike Clare (FUGRO UK)
  • Site-wide      predictive slope stability assessment, by Dr David Rushton (FUGRO UK)
  • Shock      waves in granular avalanches; Particle size segregation and levee      formation in granular free-surface flows, by Dr Nico Gray (University of      Manchester)
  • Advanced      modelling of two-phase debris flows; Full dimensional and multi-scale      modelling of landslides and avalanches, by Dr Shiva P. Pudasaini (University      of Bonn)
  • Experimental      approaches to debris flow dynamics, by Dr. Barbara Turnbull (University of      Nottingham);
  • Snow      avalanche, simulation: different modelling approaches and their evaluation,      by Dr Jan-Thomas Fischer (BFW Austria)
  • Landslide      impacts, by Prof Dave Petley (Durham University)
  • Coupling      of mechanical and water retention behaviour in unsaturated soils; , by Prof      Simon Wheeler (University of Glasgow)
  • Coupled      DEM and Lattice Boltzmann methods, by Prof Y.T. Feng (Swansea University)

Complementary  training on scientific writing skills was provided by Dr Jane Wellens. Prof. Wei Wu and Prof Hai-Sui Yu were present for discussion with fellows.

In the “fellow’s session”, every fellow had the opportunity to give a 15-minute presentation on their individual research work.

Besides the scientific training, fellows had the chance to visit the headquarters of ARUP (http://www.arup.com/) in London and discover the industrial prospective of landslide research, as well as to be informed about some current large-scale projects of the company around the world. Also, this visit aimed to the establishment of connections between the fellows and the company for a future collaboration, in terms of the Mumolade project.

Social events were also organized, like the visit to Chatsworth House and Gardens (http://www.chatsworth.org/), visits to local sightseeing etc. Finally, some of the fellows had the chance to visit the city of London during the weekend.

It is particularly worth to mention that this workshop was a so-called fellows-led workshop. It was basically organized by fellows themselves in collaboration with Dr Xia Li, Dr Alec Marshall and Prof Hai-Sui Yu. From every point of view, it was a well organized and successful workshop. The fellows, lecturers and project managers as well as the project coordinator could only give their praise to the fellows, especially to Vasileios Matziaris and Aleksandra Jakubczyk for undertaking the main organization tasks of the event.

Visit our gallery on facebook to take a look at some pictures taken during the workshop in Nottingham and the visit in London.