Actes du colloque

Proceedings of the 18

International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013

be based in all Europe. But for an individual country very

important question is how to attract best students to study our

profession. In this way some activities of ISSMGE can be used,

namely with respect to the professional prestige. The proposal

to prepare database of short presentations about extremely

important projects in which our profession is playing most

important role obtained very strong support in replies to the

above mentioned questionnaire. These short presentations

(about 5-7 minutes) can be used at the first course level of

geotechnical engineering education.

2.5

Activities on the national level

Many important activities are arranged on the level of the

individual National Societies, giving a great chance to all

members of the National Committee to be directly involved in

ISSMGE actions. It is not my intention to give the overview of

detailed activities of each National Society just to show on

selected examples how wide these activities are.

Most common activity is connected with national

conferences. Very often these conferences are combined with

some other activity as invited lecture, selection of best lecture of

young engineers etc. Three examples connected with different

anniversaries are selected:

Baugrundtagung – Munich, Germany , November

2010 – on the occasion of the 60 anniversary of the

DGGT – German Geotechnical Society – more than

1000 attendees and enormous number of exhibitors;

Foundation Days Stockholm, Sweden, March

2011 – with 650 participants and 60 exhibitors. Small

notes to Nordic countries which cooperate very

closely - Nordic Board Meeting was held in Helsinki

(the 25

of March, 2011) connected with celebration

of 60 anniversary of Finland Geotechnical Society.

National Conference Foundation Engineering

Brno, Czech Republic, November 2012 – where 8

European national presidents or past-presidents

presented invited lectures.

Such activity is connected in most cases with declaration of

the best paper (work) of the young geotechnical engineers or

with prize for young geotechnical engineer – e.g. in the Czech

and Slovak society it is Prof. Zaruba prize or Prof. Bazant prize.

Very often during this activity young engineers are nominated

as national representatives for European or International

conferences of young geotechnical engineers.

Smaller national societies are trying to invite some

colleagues from abroad and to open proposed action also to the

foreign colleagues and to declare their activity as multilingual.

Therefore in some cases this activity is connected with strictly

defined subject. The examples are:

Symposium on Landslides – Iasi, Romania, 2009;

Symposium on Landslides and Geo-environment –

Tirana, Albania, 2011;

Baltic Piling Days, Tallinn, Estonia, 2012.

Most of the European countries are arranging a Special

(named) Lecture, which is presented by invited very well known

foreign expert. Again only few of the “Special Lectures” are

mentioned:

London, UK - Rankin Lecture;

Vienna, Austria – Terzaghi (Vienna) Lecture;

Prague, Czech Republic – Prague Geotechnical

Lecture ;

Budapest, Hungary – Széchy Memorial Lecture

Ljubljana, Slovenia – Šuklje Memorial Lecture

Portugal -

Manuel Rocha Lecture – or Victor de

Mello Lecture together with Brazilian society

Norway - Bjerrum Lecture

Many European societies are distributing Bulletin about

society activities. In better case it is society journal combining

information with very serious scientific papers, which are

reviewed. Example is e.g. Germany with journal “Geotechnik”

or Romania with “Romanian Journal of Soil Mechanics and

Foundations” resp. Czech and Slovak with “Geotechnika”.

Portugal society publishes two journals, in association with

ABMS (Brazil): “Revista Geotecnia” (in Portuguese) and “Soils

and Rocks” (in English). All papers are reviewed. In many other

countries papers are published in civil engineering journals.

Again the example, now from Spain - the main journal for

Geotechnical publications is “Ingeniería Civil”, issued quarterly

by CEDEX. Also, the journals “Revista de Obras Públicas” and

“Informes de la Construcción” publish papers about

Geotechnical aspects. All of them are published in Spanish, and

the last one is indexed in JCR. Top level journal is from UK “

Géotechnique” with relatively high impact factor. But even

some smaller societies have its own journal with impact factor

as e.g. Slovenia with journal “Acta Geotechnica Slovenica”.

ACTIVITIES AT THE EUROPEAN LEVEL

3.1

International Conference ISSMGE

International Conference is just now arranged in

France, Paris,

between September 1

and September 6

2013.

Main theme:

“Challenges and Innovations in Geotechnics”.

Proposed format and proposed themes were defined in very

early stage of preparation and approved by Council Meeting in

Alexandria. The French Society for Soil Mechanics and

Geotechnical Engineering was working very hardly on, first of

all members of the Executive Committee Dr. Alain Guilloux,

Prof. Pierre Delage and Dr. Philippe Mestat. Prof. Roger Frank

is playing very important coordinative role. Nevertheless during

the phase of preparation and specification of conference

programme played also extremely important role ISSMGE

President J.L. Briaud, who recommended a certain change of

the classical structure and proposed to give larger space for

members who are active in ISSMGE Technical Committees.

Therefore

Monday 2 and Tuesday 3 September will be devoted

to plenary sessions including the Terzaghi Oration, seven

Honoured Lectures, three Special Conferences and a Forum

devoted to "Challenges and Innovation in Geotechnical

Engineering”. Wednesday 4 and Thursday 5 September will be

devoted to parallel sessions including both the Discussion

Sessions and the Workshops organised in relation with the

ISSMGE Technical Committees.

All conference participants will have chance to compare this

new approach with classical one.

3.2

European Conferences

XV European Conference on Soil Mechanics and

Geotechnical Engineering

was held between September 12– 15, 2011 in Athens, Greece.

Main theme

“Geotechnics of Hard Soils – Weak Rocks”.

Organizing committee, headed by triumvirate composed

from Professors Anagnostopoulos, Tsatsanifos and Pachakis

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