News letter Dam edition

Ingeokring Newsletter
Review of the 10th IAEG Congress, September 2006,
Nottingham (UK)
Leon van Paassen
From September 6-11, 2006 the 10th Congress of the International
Association for Engineering Geology and the environment
(IAEG) was organised in Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Hosted by the UK branch of the IAEG, the Engineering
Group of the Geological Society of London, the conference
was attended by more than 400 participants, of which 11
from our Dutch division Ingeokring, and some 800 abstracts
were received from all over the world.
Part of the Dutch delegation to Nottingham. From left to right: Robrecht
Schmitz, Michiel Maurenbrecher, Niek Rengers, Robert Vuurens
and Leon van Paassen.
quote and write papers for the bulletin. Finally the location
of the IAEG conference for 2010 was chosen to be Auckland,
New Zealand. For more details on these IAEG issues go to
the website www.iaeg.info.
Next day the conference started with an opening lecture by
John Burland, giving an overview of the current status of
Geotechnical Engineering (as a merge of engineering geology,
soil mechanics and rock mechanics) and emphasising
the necessity of theoretical models, laboratory experiments
and practical case histories to make predictions about future
behaviour. The next 4 days many papers were presented in 3
parallel sessions and all technical committees organised
their yearly meetings. Meanwhile continuous poster sessions
prevented boredom and gave opportunity for discussions.
Some of my personal highlights were presentations
about using rock models to predict the behaviour of ancient
historical buildings in Rome and the design of a new metro
in Napoli, TC meetings on building stones and historical
monuments and presentation of an upcoming publication
on deserts and a youth forum. The main goal of each conference:
to gain new ideas, meet old friends and make new
ones, was very well established during this one. Especially
the conference dinner and final day of field excursions
added to the already good atmosphere.
On the first day of the conference the yearly IAEG council
meeting was held, presided by Niek Rengers, honorary
member of Ingeokring. During this meeting the IAEG executive
committee presented their yearly reports on activities
and finances and all the technical committees of IAEG and
joint technical committees of IAEG, ISRM, ISSMGE gave an
overview of their current activities. The new IAEG president,
Fred Baynes, was elected together with 7 new regional vicepresidents.
A proposal by the presidents of IAEG, ISRM and ISSMGE to
found a Federation of International Geo-Engineering Societies
(FIGS), was supported by a narrow majority of council
members. The objective of FIGS is to raise awareness for the
Geo-engineering profession and coordinate activities in
overlapping interests between the members of the federation.
Brian Hawkins, editor of the IAEG bulletin, showed
some nice quoting statistics and encouraged all members to
Summit of Mam Tor on the left forms the back scarp of a major
landslide (bottom right) containing 3.2 Mm 3 of sliding material, which
started sliding 300 to 400 years ago and still continues to slide at an
average rate of 100 mm/year.
Dam edition | Double Issue 2007/2008 | 45