Actes du colloque

Proceedings of the 18

International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Paris 2013

Votes

For:

Against:

Abstentions: 6

Thus, Council approved the motion, and the Israel Member

Society is now part of the ISSMGE European region.

REGIONAL REPORTS BY VICE-PRESIDENTS ON

REGIONAL ACTIVITIES

The President invited the regional Vice-Presidents to present

their reports in turn. The reports are included in Appendix 2.

Professor Samuel Ejezie (VP for Africa) presented his

report, noting that the importance of the Alexandria Council

Meeting in 2009 was still felt in the region, with increased

activity particularly in societies to the north and south of the

continent. The central area remained relatively inactive but this

was attributable to very different political situations in those

countries. He was also pleased to report back on the success of

the recent regional conference in Mozambique, with a very high

number of participants. The next Regional Conference (the

16th ARC in 2015) would be held in Tunisia and the next

edition of the Young Geotechnical Engineers’ Conference

would be held late in 2012 in Egypt. He noted that great efforts

were being made in the region to increase membership (both in

terms of Corporate Associates and Member Societies).

Professor Askar Zhussupbekov (VP for Asia) reviewed the

Member Societies of his region, and welcomed the new

members, the Lebanese Geotechnical Engineering Society and

the Chinese Taipei Geotechnical Society. He was pleased to

report that not only were the Asian Technical Committees very

active, but that the Asian societies in general were well

represented in the ISSMGE Technical Committees. He noted

that the organisation of the next Asian YGEC in Tokushima in

2012 was well in hand.

Professor Michael Davies (VP for Australasia) presented his

report, noting that though small (only two societies in the

region), both were very active. In fact the Australian

Geotechnical Society was now the largest Technical Society in

Engineers Australia and he highly recommended their official

Bulletin “Australian Geomechanics”. In New Zealand,

activities had been dominated by the recent Christchurch

earthquake, and seismic design guidelines on “Geotechnical

Earthquake Engineering Practice” were being produced. The

next edition of the ANZ regional conference would be held in

2012 in Melbourne, and Professor Davies was pleased to invite

the Board to hold a meeting at that event.

Professor Ivan Vanicek presented his report on European

activities. He pointed out that it was the largest of the regions

and therefore he could not go into too much detail regarding the

activities of the 34 member societies. The most significant

upcoming events were the 2013 International Conference

together with the International Young Geotechnical Engineers

Conference in Paris, and the 2012 YGEC in Sweden. He

reported that an issue of concern amongst European Member

Societies was the prestige of the profession and how this was

affected by the notion of risk. Society in general demanded

100% perfection, which was clearly not possible, and

consideration needed to be given to the idea of risk sharing.

Professor Gabriel Auvinet presented his report on North

America, which though small (only three Member Societies)

accounted for almost 20% of the total individual membership of

the organisation. All three member societies were doing well,

and the Canadian Geotechnical Society had done a sterling job

in the organisation of the 2011 Panama Conference. He also

noted that the society in Mexico had recently had a name

change, and was now known as the Mexican Society for

Geotechnical Engineering (Sociedad Mexicana de Ingeniería

Geotécnica).

Professor Roberto Terzariol presented his report on the

South American region, in which he compared it to the other

ISSMGE regions in terms of the number of Member Societies

represented and the ratio of members to the general population

of the regions. He highlighted a number of difficulties faced by

the South American member societies and the proposed plans to

rectify these, including the new South American vice-

presidency webpage

(http://issmge-savp.blogspot.com/

) created

to help tackle communication issues within the region.

The President thanked the Vice-Presidents for their

contributions. He took advantage of the short break to

introduce distinguished visitors from the sister societies:

Professor Jorge Zornberg (representing the International

Geosynthetics Society), Mr Rick Staples (Tunnelling

Association of Canada), and Professor Owen White

(International Association for Engineering Geology and the

Environment).

The President was also pleased to announce that the post

conference volume from the XVII International Conference for

Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering in Alexandria

was now available, and would be distributed by the publishers

to registered delegates of that conference.

AMENDMENT TO BYLAWS 5A.2 AND 5A.5

The Secretary General introduced this item, which had become

necessary because the Society needed to change accountants.

Essentially what was required was a change in meaning: the

term “audited” in Bylaws 5A.2 and 5A.5 when referring to the

ISSMGE accounts was not being correctly used. At the time the

current ISSMGE Statutes were drawn up (in 1989, in Rio de

Janeiro) it was common to refer to the “auditing” of accounts.

However, in recent years, the term “auditing” had acquired both

financial and legal implications and according to current

English financial law, the society’s accounts did not require

formal auditing. It would be sufficient for the accounts to be

“independently reviewed”. The Secretary General proposed the

new wording and asked if there were any comments from the

floor, but there were none.

The President noted that there were two Bylaws in which a

change of wording was proposed, and asked if anyone objected

to voting for both at the same time. There were no objections,

so Council was asked to vote, with the following result:

Votes

For:

Against:

Abstentions: 2

The proposal was thus carried, and the Bylaws were

amended to read as follows:

5A.2 Independently reviewed financial statements of

receipts and expenditure shall be presented to each

meeting of the Council for the period since the

previous Council Meeting.

5A.5 A financial statement of receipts and expenditures

shall be presented to each Board Meeting.

ISSMGE BULLETIN

Professor Ikuo Towhata presented his report (included here as

Appendix 3). Since taking over two years ago, he has

maintained the editing process of the Bulletin as established by

Professor Osamu Kusakabe. The number of annual editions has

gone up from 4 to 6, and there has also been an increase in the

number of articles published. He noted that the articles were

not peer-reviewed, and that it was now time for both the

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