With the year’s highlight event behind us, the jet lag dissipated, it is now time to take stock of our experience.

The IAEG – International Association for Engineering Geology and the Environment is the point of reference for engineering geologists from all over the world. Every four years, delegates gather together for the association’s world congress, to share recent advances and set priorities for the future of research and the profession. After a delay due to persiting COVID-related restrictions, the last congress finally took place this year in Chengdu, China, from September 21st to 27th. It was a great success.

Before discussing the details of our participation, let us make a quick flashback to the origins. In the early years, Czechoslovakian engineering geologists played a prominent role in the IAEG and the 1968 was their annus mirabilis. In April in Brno, Quido Záruba and Jaroslav Pasek hosted the first scientific symposium of the IAEG, followed by an organised section at the XXIII International Geological Congress in Prague in August. During the congress, the first general assembly of the IAEG was held, the first statutes were ratified and a fully functional executive committee was elected for a period of four years to replace the provisional committee led by Israeli professor Asher Shadmon (source). Professor Quido Záruba was elected as the President of the IAEG and Jaroslav Pasek was nominated Chairman of IAEG’s first working group (now Commissions), focusing on landslides.

Fast-forward to the present, landslides remain one of the grand challenges in engineering geology and a topic broadly discussed at IAEG gatherings and in IAEG’s official journal, the BOEG – Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment. Today, the Czech national group of the IAEG is represented by Gianvito Scaringi, who carries out research on landslides together with the Geohazards Group at Charles University’s Faculty of Science.

In Chengdu, the heart of Sichuan’s land of abundance in China, renowned for its spicy cuisine and home to the giant panda, the Geohazards Group presented five works related to past and current research. Gianvito Scaringi reported on recent activities of the Institute of Hydrogeology, Engineering Geology and Applied Geophysics, led by Professor David Mašín, concerning the study of bentonite barriers in deep geological repositories of radioactive waste in the frame of two important European projects: EURAD and BEACON. In a second presentation, Gianvito Scaringi introduced the state of the art on the role of temperature in the stability of slopes, further elaborating on a recent article published by him and Marco Loche in the journal Geomorphology. In particular, he pointed out the connection between thermal and rate effects during shearing as demonstrated by laboratory experiments, confirming what theorised decades earlier by another renowned Czech engineer, Jaroslav Feda.

The aforementioned experiments were discussed in detail by Om Prasad Dhakal, who also presented a modelling experience forming part of his doctoral work, where consequences in terms of landslide severity were delineated. As higher temperatures weaken some kinds of soil and strengthen others, the distribution of landslides will change in the future because of climate change (see our recent preprint here). Notably, no models exist, that can currently account for this change in regional landslide risk assessments.

Marco Loche delivered two presentations, contributing to this line of research at the regional scale. In the first presentation, he reveled in a case study in Turkey that the patterns of active and relict landslides are markedly different, suggesting a change in landslide trigger – from seismic shaking to precipitation (see the full article here). In the second presentation, he used a multitemporal landslide inventory of the epicentral area of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (magnitude 8) to demonstrate that, as the legacy effect of the shaking fades away, landslide remobilisations on mountain slopes (caused by precipitation) are increasingly affected by the spatial pattern of temperature. This research earned him a publication in Nature Portfolio’s journal Scientific Reports (full paper here). Notably, higher temperatures correlated with more landslides, suggesting a warming-induced weakening of the ground which is consistent with laboratory experiments as already mentioned (see results here).

Aside from the technical programme, plenty of events took place, beginning with the official meetings of the IAEG. The Czech Republic was represented by Gianvito Scaringi at an important Council Meeting, where among other decisions, revisions of the statutes were approved (promoting equal opportunities and establishing representation in the executive committee of the YEG – Young Engineering Geologists group and the women in engineering geology) and the place and dates of the XV IAEG Congress were decided: Delft (Netherlands), 31 October – 5 November 2026. Gianvito Scaringi also participated in the inaugural meeting of a new global partnership that is being established, the SIMR, which will promote the use of smart informatics in multi-hazard risk reduction, and in a strategic meeting to promote international joint doctoral programmes and doctoral mobility to enhance knowledge transfer in geological hazards. During the congress, Gianvito Scaringi received three awards: the Richard Wolters prize (2nd classified) as a rising star in engineering geology, the best reviewer award for the BOEG journal (where he is also a member of the editorial board), and the prestigious Science and Technology Award, shared with key members of the team led by Professor Xuanmei Fan who shed light on the chains of geologic hazards induced by large earthquakes (check the highly cited article in Review of Geophysics here). Last but not least, Om Prasad Dhakal was among the young researchers who was admitted to the iRALL School, a two-weeks programme promoted by the Chengdu-based International Research Association on Large Landslides. The school took place immediately after the congress and featured lectures of international experts and various fieldwork activities in the amazing frame of the Dragon’s Gate Mountain (the Longmenshan).

Back in Prague, research at the Geohazards Group is now in full swing thanks to a prestigious ERC CZ grant, awarded to Gianvito Scaringi to deepen the knowledge on the mechanisms by which climate change-induced warming can affect the type, size, distribution and severity of landslides.