Riverbank collapse during Australia’s Big Dry

An Engineering Geomorphological approach

Dr. Elysśa De Carli

Floodplains, coastal sediments, and slope deposits form the building foundations for most of the world’s cities and constitute the deposits that engineers must work and build in. Each of these geomorphic environments presents a unique set of engineering challenges. In the Northern Hemisphere there is a long and well-established relationship between engineers and geomorphologists, where geomorphology helps to explain and predict the spatial distribution, properties, and mechanical behaviour of engineering materials. In Australia and New Zealand this intersection is less common and obscured by nomenclature, with much of the overlap found in regolith literature. This case study uses an engineering geomorphological approach to solve an unprecedented riverbank collapse problem on the Murray River in South Australia.

About the speaker

Dr. Elysśa De Carli SLR Consulting

Dr Elysśa De Carli is an engineering geomorphologist with over nine years’ experience in the areas of fluvial and coastal geomorphology, engineering geology and geotechnical engineering. Elysśa’s key skills involve using geomorphic principles to inform geotechnical investigations and civil projects through landscape interpretation and subsurface investigation. Elysśa specializes in the interaction between hydrology, hydraulics, sediment transport processes and fluvial geomorphology.

Elysśa currently works as an engineering geomorphologist within SLR Consulting’s Geotechnics and Mine Waste Engineering (GMWE) team in Wollongong. Prior to her role at SLR, Elysśa was a lecturer at the University of Wollongong in the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences (SEALS).

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