Supporting Projects
A number of Supporting Projects are aligned with this conference. Learn more about each one below.
The Hōretireti Whenua Sliding Lands programme will create national-scale landslide models that can forecast where rapid and dangerous landslides are likely to be triggered by earthquakes and rainfall events.
This five-year research programme is funded $10.5 million from the MBIE 2023 Endeavour Fund and is led by GNS Science, with research partners Massey University, Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, Te Runanganui o Ngāti Porou, Market Economics, University of Auckland, Resilient Organisations and University of Canterbury.
GNS Science is working with iwi partners, international collaborators from the UK (Durham University) and Switzerland (ETH Zurich) and stakeholders from central and local government.
The models will use susceptibility factors such as rainfall, ground shaking, vegetation type, and slope gradient to determine the likelihood and locations of fast-moving landslides across the country for earthquake and rainfall triggers. These susceptibility models will be combined with landslide runout models and vulnerability models to predict the hazard and risk from landslides. From this information our models will determine what the impacts may be, particularly to people, property, industry, and the environment.
The programme will also investigate people’s perception of landslide phenomena, hazards, and the models we develop to understand the risk and impacts of landslides, as well as their perceptions of vulnerability to landslides. Findings will be used to improve the communication and visualisation of model outputs around risk, as well as inform the development of the models themselves.
The effectiveness of the landslide models will be tested and refined using two case studies based in Tairāwhiti and Auckland.
Background information is available here:
Also funded for five years by MBIE’s Endeavor Fund, this programme aims to move away from expensive local reactive (post-event) in-situ monitoring to pro-active (pre-event) space-based observation across all Aotearoa.
Led by GNS Science, this work will be in collaboration with NIWA, University of Waikato, University of Canterbury, University of Leeds (UK), University of Oregon (US), University of California (US), University of Washington (US) and the Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University (Japan).
While the Sliding Lands work pays most attention to rapid, first-time slope failures that create obvious scars in the landscape and have immediate consequences, this second programme focuses on a slightly different hazard. Many landslides are pre-existing, large, deep, slow-moving and persist for generations; they damage homes, infrastructure and sometimes accelerate to fail catastrophically. Forecasting when a landslide might transition from slow to fast depends on our ability to identify the movement, constrain its mechanism, and model that movement under different driving conditions.
Until now, methods used to find and predict the occurrence of damaging landslides faced considerable limitations, with traditional ground-based monitoring being too costly, time-consuming, and offering limited spatial coverage. The team propose to use satellite data (InSAR) to detect slow-moving landslides, link their movement patterns to the climatic drivers and characterise their behaviour before they cause damaging and/or catastrophic impacts.
This ambitious approach will enable landslides to be identified nationwide, link their movement patterns to climatic drivers, and characterise their behaviour before they cause damage.
Background information is available here:
The AGS guidelines represent current best practice for landslide risk management in Australasia. The New Zealand Geotechnical Society and the Australian Geomechanics Society are working in partnership on an update to the guidelines to reflect lessons learned since they were published in 2007.
This work is expected to be approximately 80% complete by April 2026, and the conference will be used as an opportunity to involve international experts on this important project.
Background information is available here:
UC's Professional Master of Engineering Geology (PMEG) is the only programme of its kind in Australasia. It concentrates on professional training for practitioners. The PMEG is strongly applied and concentrates on professional training for practitioners, delivered in a 12-month format. Having been closed to new enrolments for several years, it is forecast to take its first new intake of students in early 2026.
This conference will help provide a springboard for the field-based elements of the programme, bringing in international expertise to support the team, and has the potential to deliver a significant field-based training programme alongside the conference.
The New Zealand Geotechnical Society is taking a series of actions to engage with its members and relevant stakeholders to explore issues relating to the availability of a skilled workforce in New Zealand.
The objective is to finalise a position and an action plan for NZGS that will include the different perspectives and to advocate for improvement.
This work will be continuing over the coming years and will use the 2026 landslide conference to share our experiences with an international audience, and to learn from their successes and challenges.