The Twelfth Lumb Lecture was successfully held yesterday (27 June). This year, we had the honour and privilege of inviting Dr Suzanne Lacasse, a world-class geotechnical expert, former Managing Director of the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), to deliver the lecture entitled “Risk Assessment and Management: Necessary Insights to Reduce Landslide Risk.” Dr Lacasse has made tremendous contributions to the global geotechnical community, particularly in the areas of probabilistic analysis, reliability-based design, and risk assessment & management in geotechnical engineering. She has been an active member of the Slope Safety Technical Review Board (SSTRB) of the GEO, CEDD since 1998, and continued to bring new insights and improvements to slope engineering practice in Hong Kong. At the Lumb Lecture, Dr Lacasse revisited the fundamental concepts of factor of safety, uncertainty and probability of failure, risk assessment and risk management, which were the prior insights of Professor Lumb more than 50 years ago. By elaborating a few landslide cases in Norway, she vividly demonstrated the importance of risk-informed decision-making (RIDM) and proposed an integrated risk framework to guide practitioners in making more effective and timely decisions that save lives. Approaching the end of the lecture, Dr Lacasse reminded us of the importance of professionalism and responsibilities. Geotechnical engineers must better understand uncertainties and manage risks to improve the safety, quality, and reliability of the systems that we build. Thank Dr Lacasse for sharing her expertise and insights with us at the Twelfth Lumb Lecture.
