Study level

  • PhD
  • Master of Philosophy
  • Honours

Faculty/School

Faculty of Science

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Supervisors

Associate Professor Jessica Trofimovs
Position
Associate Professor
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Science

External supervisors

  • Craig O'Neill (QUT)

Overview

Extreme weather events can exacerbate slope and dam stability issues. Risk mitigation, stabilisation works, and engineered solutions to slope or dam failure require detailed site and subsurface characterisation – generally undertaken after a failure, but often resulting in unacceptable delays to remediation, impacting communities, transport, and water resources.

This project will develop pre-emptive risk mitigation measures for at-risk sites, utilising remote sensing, geophysical, and monitoring approaches.

Research activities

  • This project is in collaboration with major industry stakeholders in both roads and infrastructure, and dam management.
  • Work program involves detailed surface and subsurface characterisation of site based on drone lidar, photogrammetry, subsurface geophysics, and refined site-specific risk assessment models.
  • Opportunity to deploy monitoring infrastructure at identified high-risk sites, including GNSS, inclinometer and tilt meter solutions, telemetered into a remote tracking site. Enhanced warning system of site condition changes at telemetered sites.
  • Advanced technical solutions for characterising and monitoring slopes or dam assets in hazardous environments, include the integration of passive seismology/HVSR with remote sensing data (lidar) and in-situ unmanned passive sensors (GNSS, with industry partners).

Outcomes

  • Reduction of slope-related infrastructure damage for project stakeholders, with flow-on community benefits, minimised disruption, and property damage.
  • Rapid engineering response to pre- characterised sites if failures occur.
  • Ongoing pre-emptive harm minimisation strategies throughout the broader engineering and stakeholder communities.

Skills and experience

Students with backgrounds in earth science (especially geophysics), remote sensing, civil/geotechnical engineering, geodesy or IoT are welcome to apply.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

Explore our research scholarships

Keywords

Contact

Contact the supervisor via email craig.oneill@qut.edu.au for more information.