Railway Geotechnical Asset Management in Great Britain: How Modern-Day Techniques Help Monitor Railway Infrastructure Dating to the 1800s
This article discusses asset management, risk management, and earthworks failures as experienced by Network Rail (NR), the owner, operator, and asset manager of the majority of the rail network of Great...
What Does the Crystal Ball Say? Energy and Water Issues Are Too Great to Ignore!
Over the past 15 years, the Geoprofessional Business Association's (GBA) Emerging Issues and Trends Committee has held a series of Crystal Ball Workshops (Workshops) to identify long-term emerging issues...
All About ISSMGE: An Interview with Leaders of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering
This article summarizes key discussions from an interview of a select group of International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) leaders, conducted by a small group of students...
The Wait Is Over…DIGGS Is Here!
The roll-out of Data Interchange for Geotechnical and GeoEnvironmental Specialists (DIGGS) has started, and the Ohio DOT (ODOT) has already announced that it will be required beginning January 2018. This...
Restoring Steinbeck's Carmel River: The Removal of San Clemente Dam
If you've read John Steinbeck's 1945 classic "Cannery Row," then you're already familiar with the Carmel River, which he described as "…a lovely little river. It isn't very long, but in its course it has...
Whose "Fault" Is This? Overcoming Faulting and Ancient Landslides in a Dam Abutment
The Calaveras Dam Replacement Project (CDRP) is the largest project in the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission's (SFPUC) $4.8 billion, multi-year Water System Improvement Program (WSIP). The program...
When Things Became Muddy: TVA's Response to Seepage Discharge at Boone Dam
In October 2014, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) profited from investments in a robust dam safety program. This profit did not come in the form of money, but more importantly in the protection of...
Dam Safety Management Using Risk-Informed Decision-Making Methods: A Powerful Tool or an Unnecessary Venture?
This article discusses design standards, safety methods, and risk-informed decision-making methods for dams....
The Case for Tolerable Risk Guidelines to Manage Flood Risk: Nature Bats Last
Since ancient times, people have used levees to reduce flood risk. We have built over 30,000 miles of levees in the U.S., largely on the belief that levies will unconditionally protect people who live...
Connecting Faculty in Geotechnical Engineering: Thriving in a Networked World
A robust social network, defined as a group of individuals and organizations with career-related and/or personal relationships with one another, is essential for operating successfully in today's business...
NSF Workshop on Geotechnical Fundamentals: How Researchers Can Contribute to Today's Real-World Challenges
A 2 ½ day National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Workshop (Award No. CMMI-1248053) was held in July 2016 at the NSF headquarters in Arlington, VA. The Workshop focused on fundamental principles that...
Tailings Dam Engineer of Record (EoR): There's Nothing Conventional About It
Engineer of Record (EoR) is a simple and resolute concept that's applied throughout the western world for civil works construction. It's a term that fits in a nice neat box; it represents a single person...
Tailings Impoundment Closure: It's All in the Eye of the Beholder
Since the early 1900s, the mining and power-generation industries have disposed of tailings and other waste products using impoundments. The term "tailings" typically refers to the fine-grained waste product...
Open Pit Geotechnics: Designing Slopes for a Very Deep Hole
For most hard rock surface mining operations, the development of an open pit is required to extract the ore resource. In designing an open pit, the challenge is to develop the most cost-effective pit slopes...
Where Geosynthetics Meet Mining Geotechnics: Part of the Mining Engineer's Toolbox
From enhancing stability to providing environmental containment, geosynthetic materials play an important role in mining projects and geotechnics in general. While often overlooked, advancements in geosynthetic...
Redevelopment of Aggregate and Rock Quarries: No Longer Just a Hole in the Ground
Redevelopment of former sand and gravel (aggregate) and rock quarries can be challenging, often requiring developers, quarry operators, planners, and engineers to work in tandem. As urban and suburban...
Guidelines for Construction Vibrations: How Much Rattle is Too Much?
The study of construction/blast-related ground vibrations on structures, people, and objects is a surprisingly diverse field. Vibration sources vary from blasting, all types of construction equipment,...
Automated Vibration Monitoring for Construction Applications: A Retrospective and Current Practice or… Everything Is so Much Easier Now!
My career in vibration monitoring (VM) began in the late 1980s. At that time, the state of the practice was primarily focused on blasting operations, which was driven by a boom in highway construction...
Seismic Data from Smartphones: MyShake: Building a Global Smartphone Seismic Network
Increasing the density of earthquake-monitoring instruments at a fast rate and at a low cost is a dream for many researchers who study earthquakes. MyShake, a smartphone application developed by the Berkeley...
Claims against Geotechnical Engineers: Getting it Right in the Midst of Uncertainty
Geotechnical engineering is one of engineering's riskiest professions, prone to litigation due to the inherent uncertainty associated with characterizing the subsurface. Site investigations rarely provide...
Return to search