Report on the Fourth International Symposium on Landslides, ISL – 1984

The fourth International Symposium on Landslides washeld on Toronto, Canada from September 16-22, 1984. The first day was designated as Canada Day and keynote lectures were given on Landslide problems in the different regions of Canada. From Tuesday to Friday (September 17 to 22) the International meeting covered the following topics (1) Climatic and Groundwater Aspects of Landslides (2) Slope Movements in Hard Rocks (3) Slope Movements in Weathered Rocks (4) Landslides in Heavily Over- consolidated Clays and Soft Rocks (5) Landslides in Soft Clays (6) Landslides in Silts, Sands and Loess Including Subaqueous Slides (7) Recent Developments in Landslide Studies: Analytical and Probabilistic Methods (8) Landslide Risk Mapping (9) Instrumentation and Slide Warning Systems. State-of-the-Art lecturers were selected from U.S.A., France, Hong Kong, Australia, Peru, Japan, Canada, U.K., Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and India.

Dr R.N. Chowdhury, the only such invited speaker from Australia, presented his State-of-the-Art Report on ‘Recent Developments in Landslide Studies – Probabilistic Methods’. The paper was well received and considerable interest is being shown by geotechnical engineers in this new trend i.e. use of probabilistic methods in slope engineering. There is an urgent need for the application of probabilistic methods to practical problems involving risk assessment. Relatively simple approaches need to be developed to assist engineers who are not yet exposed to probabilistic methodology.