Ripley: Infrastructure Resilience

The Science

The Ripley Landslide, British Columbia, Canada, affects the serviceability of two railway lines that connect Vancouver to the rest of Canada and to the US. Along with risks to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, public safety, communities, local heritage and the economy, this drives a need for monitoring, and the Ripley Landslide has been a focus of condition assessment for the past decade. This condition assessment involves several strands of science, including geotechnical investigation, remote sensing, and near-surface geophysics, which is a method used to collect information about large volumes of the subsurface non-invasively and very quickly when compared with other methods. This monitoring aims to characterise the landslide such that mitigation measures can be put in place to prevent slope failure. Ultimately, such long-term monitoring aims to provide information for the development of landslide early warning to improve infrastructure resilience. Our transport network supports the structure of society as a whole. Building resilience in this network to climate-change-related deterioration is integral for maintaining serviceability and mitigating the negative impacts of environmental change.  

‘Ripley: Infrastructure Resilience’ is a mosaic measuring 200 x 200 mm. It is made using cut vitreous glass tiles, grouted onto MDF board. Inspiration from this piece was taken from memories of field work undertaken on the Ripley Landslide. This artwork communicates the science undertaken at the Ripley Landslide, as the fractured nature of mosaic reflects a piecemeal approach to gathering data for asset condition assessment, and highlights monitoring equipment that, in addition to transportation infrastructure, has become a permanent structure of the landscape at this site. The bright colours of the piece are reminiscent of the geophysical data that is collected on the site, as near surface geophysics is a highly visual method of landslide characterisation.