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Proceedings of the 18
th
International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013
4
PROGRESS
The IDC Committee with the ISSMGE Liaison members meets
regularly every 3 to 4 months to work, evaluate and proceed
with the tasks in hand. A “Minutes of Meeting” report is issued
after each meeting summarizing what was discussed and the
decision taken. (Fig.2).
FIG. 2. Cover Page Extracts of Minutes of Meetings
The Committee decided to first address Task items 1 through
6 as those were judged to be a mix of short-term (IBA) and
longer term activities (IBV) that can make an important impact
to ISSMGE and the Profession. Once these tasks are
successfully completed, items 7-10 would be further defined
and work will initiate to support them. The outcomes and the
resources developed as part of tasks 2-6 are expected to support
tasks 7-10 as well as any additional future initiatives.
For each ongoing task, a Task force that consists of members
of the IDC as well as individuals from outside the IDC is
formed.
4.1
Task 1: Innovator of the Year Award
The IDC prepared a proposal outlining the objective,
description, rules, and submission requirements for this award.
As outlined in the description “The ISSMGE Award for
innovation in Geoengineering is awarded bi-annually to
individuals or groups (researchers, consultants, contractors) in
recognition of innovations in Geoengineering that have a
pronounced impact on geoengineering practice, research and
education. The term innovation is used broadly to describe any
major unprecedented achievements that led to a major
advancement in our Profession and ideally, covers the entire
spectrum from fundamental science to application and
implementation in construction/practice.”
The IDC submitted its proposal to the President of the
ISSMGE on August 23 2010. An Awards Board Level
Committee has been formed by the President and is chaired by
Prof. François Schlosser. The Awards Committee will be in
charge of this and other awards and will work with the IDC to
promote/support this award.
4.2
Task 2: Development of an Electronic Lexicon
Per the President’s request IDC was charged with creating an
electronic version of the ISSMGE Lexicon that was published
in 1981 and included a total of 1592 terms in eight languages
(English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian,
Spanish, and Swedish).
A task force was formed for this activity. Following a
discussion among the IDC members the following
tasks/objectives have been set:
On a preliminary basis, make the 1981 Lexicon available as
a pdf file: This task has been completed with the assistance of
the President and the pdf file is currently available on the
ISSMGE website.
For the long term, the IDC set the following objectives for
the Electronic Lexicon:
1. Digitization of existing (eight) languages: The following
languages have already been digitized: English,
Spanish, Russian, German and Portuguese (a total of
five). Of the remaining three languages (Swedish,
French and Italian), assistance is being solicited by
members Countries to digitize the terms.
2. Programming and online development of the Lexicon:
An application will be developed with the assistance of
IT professionals from Geoengineer.org that will allow
the search and selection of any term of the lexicon in
any language. The application will automatically
generate the translations of this tem in other languages.
This application cannot be supported by the current
ISSMGE website, and thus the IDC is working with the
Board to develop a new ISSMGE website that will
support this application.
3. Translation of terms to additional languages and
incorporation in the online Lexicon: With the assistance
of a large number of volunteers and Member Countries,
the terms of the Lexicon have been already translated in
five additional languages (Chinese and Chinese Simple,
Japanese, Farsi (Persian), Finish) and two more are
currently being worked on (Arabic, and Greek). Those
terms will also become available through the new
version of the Lexicon.
In addition to ongoing activities, invitations have been sent
for member countries to translate the Lexicon in additional
languages and these translations can become available through
the online application. Once the task is completed, additional
terms may be added and the IDC will work to include the
translations of these terms too.
4.3
Task 3: Webinars
As requested by the President, the ISSMGE is interested in
developing Webinars that will become available to its Member
Countries and professionals. The IDC was charged with
exploring the options available to the organization to achieve
this and perform a feasibility study.
The IDC Task Force performed an extensive research of
available webinar services. A set of recommendations were
documented in a Webinar Services report and submitted to the
ISSMGE Board in March 2011. In general, to ensure the quality
of the webinar services, a significant investment cost is
necessary to operate the webinars and this cost will have to be
passed on to the users of the webinars. Following a request of
the Board, a business plan was prepared and submitted to the
Board for discussion on April 20th 2011. Fig. 3 shows an
extract of cover pages for the webinar Service Report &
Business Plan. A decision by the Board on this issue is pending.
FIG. 3. WEBINAR Documents Submitted to ISSMGE Board
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