Actes du colloque - Volume 6

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Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013
Final communiqué from the 18th ICSMGE Organizing and Scientific Committees
Communiqué final des comités d’organisation et scientifique de la 18ème CIMSG
V. Bernhardt, P. Delage, R. Frank, P. Mestat, J. Robert
1 FINAL COMMUNIQUE
The 18th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and
Geotechnical Engineering (18th ICSMGE) took place from 2 to
6 September 2013 at the Palais des Congrès in Paris (France). It
has been organized by the French Society for Soil Mechanics
and Geotechnical Engineering (CFMS) and resulted in a very
successful event. The 18 th ICSMGE was preceded by the 5th
International Young Geotechnical Engineers’ Conference
(iYGEC 2013) held from 31st of August to 1st of September at
Ecole des Ponts ParisTech at Marne-la-Vallée, close to Paris.
The 5 th iYGEC brought together 164 participants from 57
countries (see report by Professor Yu-Jun Cui, Chair of the
iYGEC).
On Sunday 1st of September, the 80 Member Societies
attending or being represented elected the new President of the
International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical
Engineering (ISSMGE) for four years. Professor Roger Frank
(Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, France) was elected, succeeding
Professor Jean- Louis BRIAUD (Texas A&M university, USA).
The CFMS, who nominated Professor Roger Frank, warmly
congratulates him and will strongly support his action
throughout his four years term. At the same meeting, Seoul
(South Korea) was selected as the host city of the next
International Conference in 2017.
The 18th ICSMGE was quite a great success, with indeed a
large attendance of 2081 participants in total, 179
accompanying persons and 87 exhibitors. Four Partners, one
Platinum sponsor and 15 Gold sponsors significantly supported
the Conference. 1875 participants were registered for the
scientific sessions. The 12 plenary sessions on Monday and
Tuesday brought together up to 1650 participants.
It seems that it is the first time that an ICSMGE brings
together so many people with rooms full of delegates during
both plenary and parallel sessions. The Organising Committee
of the 18th ICSMGE warmly thanks all delegates, as they made
the Conference so successful thanks to the scientific quality of
the oral and poster presentations, and to the lively discussions
made during the parallel sessions.
The structure and organisation of the Paris 2013 Conference
was significantly different from that of previous ICSMGEs,
with a paramount role devoted to the Technical Committees
(TCs) of the ISSMGE, as initially suggested by Pdt J.L. Briaud.
During the two first days, besides the Terzaghi Oration
delivered by Suzanne Lacasse, 6 Honour lectures were
delivered by outstanding colleagues selected by various TCs.
Under the guidance of the Scientific Committee, TCs also
played a key role in managing the papers that had been accepted
to the Conference through the Member Societies. TCs
nominated the General Reporters who presented a synthesis of
the papers presented. They also selected the papers for the oral
presentations in the 28 Discussion Sessions that were held
during the third and the fourth day of the Conference, as well as
for poster presentations.
Another specificity that is believed to have fostered the
technical and scientific interest of delegates and the large
attendance to sessions was the ability given to TCs to organise,
as parallel sessions, their own Workshops on their topic, on a
completely free basis. 19 high quality TC Workshops were
hence organised that were not dependent on the papers
submitted to the Conference. These Workshops could also
provide some openings and perspectives on emerging themes
that were not necessarily addressed by the papers submitted to
the Conference. As an example, whereas very few papers were
submitted in the topic of Sustainability, the Workshop organised
by the recently created TC307 was very well attended with quite
fruitful exchanges and discussions. In this regard, the
Conference helped opening new perspectives, besides standard
(and important) topics that are currently addressed in
Geotechnical Engineering (unsurprisingly, Deep Foundations
and Soil-structure interactions were the topic most dealt with by
the Conference papers). Also, the founding meeting of a new
TC devoted to Geo-energy (TC308) was held during the
Conference, together with many other TC meetings.
The Conference also hosted 8 Special sessions on various
topics, as seen in the program. The competence and strong
motivation of the TCs in the organisation of both the parallel
Discussion Sessions and Workshops (that were followed in
average by 800 persons) certainly played a key role in the high
scientific quality and large attendance during the Conference.
The Scientific Committee of the 18th ICSMGE does want to
emphasize and warmly acknowledge the strong commitment of
the TCs in the success of the Conference. This experience is
certainly to be renewed in the future.
The four volumes of the Proceedings of the 18th ICSMGE
(3486 pages, plus the table of contents and the index of authors)
contain the Terzaghi Oration, the Honour Lectures, the Special
Lectures, followed by the written contributions presented
according to the TC they refer to, and introduced by the TC
General Report. More than half of the 772 written contributions
were either presented orally during the discussion sessions (173)
or exposed during the poster sessions (230). These four volumes
together with a fifth one including some missing papers are
available online free of charge through the websites of CFMS
) and ISSMGE ( ).
Many pictures taken during the sessions and breaks are also
available on the CFMS website .
The 7 technical visits on Friday 6th of September brought
together about 133 participants. The Francophone event that
took place at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers
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