Events & Courses

Whatever sector you work in, your success will hinge to some degree or other on the activities of the Earth on which we live.

For the first time, the Society hosted a conference that brought together leading Earth Scientists and practitioners from a range of other sectors to share experiences, practices and technologies to collectively learn how we can better manage risk.

Session themes included:

• What is risk, how do different sectors and disciplines approach it and how does it leave us vulnerable at different scales?
• Lessons for Earth Scientists from other sectors with a heightened exposure, e.g. aviation, healthcare, big engineering
• Different sectors’ experience of management of risk, from the organisational level down to the modelling of uncertainties around given activities
• Best practices for communicating geoscience risks to decision makers, other sectors and the public at large
• The nature of the Earth’s hazards and how they translate into meaningful and dramatic consequences for society, e.g. for finance, urban development, contingency planning
• How we can best use technology to identify, manage and communicate risks and their uncertainties
• Understanding the dangers and exceptional capabilities of human behaviour under event-based stress through to consideration of long range natural hazards

Speakers included:

• Tim Atkinson (aviation)
• Laurance Donnelly (IUGS-IFG, Arup)
• Stephen Hallett (Dream CDT, Cranfield)
• Bill McGuire (UCL)
• Major General (Ret'd) Mungo Melvin CB OBE
• Keith Smith (Lloyd's)
• David Shilston (Atkins)
• Colin Stevenson (Crocodiles of the World)

• Conference programme
• Conference abstract book
• Approved speaker presentations
• Communication in Geology (Geological Society Special Publication paper)