The Present And Future Of Virtual and Augmented Reality In Geotechnical Engineering: This Technology Has Gone Way Beyond Gaming!
One of the greatest challenges with subsurface construction has always been our relative inability to visualize underground conditions that are often comprised of spatially variable soil and rock strata,...
Geotechnical Aspects Of Coastal Impacts During Hurricanes Harvey And Irma: Logistical and Technical Challenges During Reconnaissance
As designers and managers for society’s infrastructure, civil engineers, including the geotechnical community, must understand and predict the most severe expected loadings from physical or environmental...
Geotechnics of the Suez Canal Construction: 150 Years Old, but Nearly Four Millennia in the Making
Construction of the Suez Canal created one of the most important waterways in the world, connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Its construction from 1854 to 1869 created three cities, Port-Said, Ismailia,...
Immortal and Ethereal Beauty in Stone: The Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal, probably one of the most beautiful structures in the world, has withstood the vagaries of history and the environment. Lengthy tomes have been written on its beauty and the details of the...
Advances In Geosynthetic Solutions For Sustainable Landfill Design: Geosynthetics Really Do Last!
Even though geosynthetics are now a well-established discipline within geotechnical engineering, ingenuity continues to play a significant role in projects involving their use. This is because it’s possible...
Erratum for "Geotechnical Resilience: It’s a Matter of Choice" March/April 2019
What Lurks Below: The Geotechnical Intrigue of Boston’s Back Bay
In 1858, the great filling of Back Bay began. Completed in about 20 years, it led to nearly 100 city blocks of iconic 4- and 5-story brick rowhouses. In the past 60 years, about 50 high-rise buildings...
What Lies Ahead?
How will trends in climate change, alternative energy, high-tech construction, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and public funding affect communities, infrastructure, and the practice of civil engineering...
What's Hiding Between the Boreholes?
Often, geotechnical explorations consist of a few, strategically placed boreholes and considerable interpolation and extrapolation by the geotechnical engineer. The information between boreholes in most...
State of the Practice for Laboratory Testing of Soft Soils: It's All in the Details
As with all material testing, soils testing has undergone dramatic advances in technology because of computer automation. In the 1970s, laboratories were filled with dial gages, proving rings, mercury...
Sustainability and Resilience in Transportation Infrastructure Geotechnics: Integrating Advanced Technologies for Better Asset Management
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, enumerates 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be achieved by the member countries...
Forensic Investigations Get to the Facts: East Side IHNC Flood Wall Breaches during Hurricane Katrina
East Side IHNC Flood Wall Breaches during Hurricane Katrina. I served as a geotechnical expert for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) supporting the defense of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)...
Low-Gravity Experiments: Shear Testing Takes a Nose Dive
A major challenge to making celestial soil mechanics viable is to re-engineer the profession's toolkit to provide geotechnical solutions without the luxury of ex-situ and in-situ testing as we know them...
Eyes in the Heavens: Satellite Technologies in Remote Site Monitoring
Installation and maintenance of instrumentation to monitor geotechnical projects in remote locales is usually more challenging than sites in urban areas for both technical and logistical reasons. In most...
Remote Mapping in Alaska's Wilderness: Accessing Resources in the Last Frontier
The rich, natural resources of Alaska have long been the focus of many pioneers seeking fortune in the Last Frontier. As captured in historical images of dedicated Klondike Gold Rush miners seeking their...
What's New in Geo? The Future of Numerical Geo-Modeling: Is 3D Here to Stay?!
Application of soil mechanics in engineering practice has undergone remarkable changes over the past 50 years as a result of developments in computer technology. Each improvement in computing capability,...
A Preliminary Case for the Existence of Hurricane Alleys in the Gulf of Mexico
A review of hurricance intensity in the Gulf of Mexico suggests there are two alleys where hurricanes are roughly 20% more intense than elsewhere. This paper develops a physical basis for the alleys using...
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...
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