CANADIAN BEST PRACTICE HAZARD GUIDELINES FOR PROFESSIONAL GEOSCIENTISTS

Professionals in all disciplines frequently rely on specialized documentation that provides examples of “best practice” for its practitioners. Occasionally such documents are prescriptive, regulatory and obligatory in the legal sense, but more frequently they are timely and extensive compilations (guidelines) by the peer community that illustrate current philosophies of practice, successful examples of application and consensus opinions on various methods and techniques relevant to the discipline in question. Professional geologists, geotechnical engineers and others in Canada will soon have access to a series of national hazard related “guidelines” to be issued by the Government of Canada that address hazard topics affecting the health and safety of Canadians. The aim of each volume is to provide a state of the art synthesis of the particular hazard including, where applicable, lexicons of specialized terminology, reviews of methods and techniques for hazard identification and monitoring, analyses of the contributing and triggering factors, descriptions of mitigative options and many other aspects. Specialists at the Geological Survey of Canada are now coordinating contributions from respective Canadian experts representing government, academia and the private sector as advisors, editors, authors and reviewers to the various volume chapters. The Geological Survey of Canada is publishing a series of volumes on topics ranging from landslide hazards and seismic site characterization to space weather phenomena. The significance and role of adequate representation by the professional community practicing in various sectors, importance of collaboration and dialogue, need for endorsement by learned societies and other lessons learned in this exercise will be outlined and reviewed in this presentation. The guidelines effort by the GSC provides an excellent example of a successful program and strategy that best serves both the professional geoscience community and the public at large on a number of geo-issues of value to all participants.