Staff profile

I am a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience. My research focuses on developing stakeholder-focused guidance and methodologies to help mitigate landslides and improve slope stabilisation in lower-income countries. The guidance and methodologies are developed by working collaboratively with stakeholders, currently engaged in in Nepal and India, by employing a combination of methods including numerical analyses, geotechnical and geological mapping, and qualitative data collection. I have a particular interest in improving the resilience of road networks by helping to prevent road cut slope failures. 

I acquired my PhD in Geotechnical Engineering from Newcastle University in 2023, which was sponsored by NERC IAPETUS. My PhD aimed to further understand some of the causes for inadequate road slope stabilisation in lower-income country settings, and to develop stakeholder-focused methodologies to aid the planning and design of road slope stabilisation. 

During my PhD, I completed a three-month internship at the Research and Information Service (RaISe) of the Northern Ireland Assembly. During the internship, I produced a blog post on transport trends during the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland and a published research article and blog post on climate change risks to transport infrastructure in Northern Ireland.

Prior to my PhD, I received an MSci in Geology from the University of Birmingham in 2017, with a year abroad at the University of Copenhagen. During my undergraduate, I conducted two months of research at the Open University using a 3D image viewer (Pro3D) to examine and measure ripple-like bedforms found along the Opportunity rover traverse of Mars.

• Geotechnical Engineering
• Landslides
• Road engineering
• Slope stability

Conference Paper

• Robson, E., Pradhan, S., & Toll, D. (2024). A Field Study on the Stability of Road Cut Slopes in Nepal. . https://doi.org/10.53243/Geo-Resilience-2023-1-8
• Robson, E., Utili, S., Milledge, D., & Upadhyay, N. (2021). Road slope stabilisation in Nepal: stakeholder perspectives.

Journal Article

• Sana, E., Kumar, A., Robson, E., Prasanna, R., Kala, U., & Toll, D. G. (2024). Preliminary assessment of series of landslides and related damage by heavy rainfall in Himachal Pradesh, India, during July 2023. Landslides, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-023-02209-1
• Robson, E., Milledge, D., Utili, S., & Dattola, G. (2023). A Computationally Efficient Method to Determine the Probability of Rainfall-Triggered Cut Slope Failure Accounting for Upslope Hydrological Conditions. Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00603-023-03694-5
• Robson, E., Agosti, A., Utili, S., & Milledge, D. (2022). A methodology for road cutting design guidelines based on field observations. Engineering Geology, 307, Article 106771. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2022.106771
• Balme, M., Robson, E., Barnes, R., Butcher, F., Fawdon, P., Huberd, B., …Vagog, J. (2018). Surface-based 3D measurements of small aeolian bedforms on Mars and implications for estimating ExoMars rover traversability hazards. Planetary and Space Science, 153, 39-53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2017.12.008

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Kumar, A., Sana, E., & Robson, E. (2023). Himalayan communities are under siege from landslides – and climate change is worsening the crisis. [The Conversation]

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Robson, E. (2021). Climate change risks to transport infrastructure. [Blog post]
• Robson, E. (2021). Transport trends during the COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland. [Blog post]

Report

• Robson, E. (2021). Climate change risks to transport infrastructure. [Research paper for Northern Ireland Assembly, NIAR 227-2021]