ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 4 Issue 3 September 2010

Message to ISSMGE from the Vice President for Europe

Professor Ivan Vaníček

Dear professional colleagues, during the new ISSMGE Board Meeting in Moscow in June of this year I was asked to prepare the first Vice President message to our society members. The reason is that my message should be not only a report about the situation in Europe but also it should be connected with a very sensitive question for most of us – how to improve the image of our profession – geotechnical engineering generally. In agreement with this fact my message is divided into two parts.

A very comprehensive report about the situation in Europe was presented by Prof. Roger Frank only 2 years ago (ISSMGE Bulletin, Vol. 2. Issue 2, June 2008). Therefore I will concentrate only on the last year activities and what we are preparing for the future. My advantage is that Roger is still a member of the ISSMGE board as an appointed member so my contact with him is very close and I can share with him some older experiences.

Starting with the young generation, the 20th European Young Geotechnical Engineers Conference was arranged in Brno, Czech Republic, at the end of May and beginning of June in 2010. Thirty one national societies accepted the invitation and supported their delegates. Only two delegates applied for a financial support from ISSMGE. The organizers from the Geotechnical Department of the Technical University Brno arranged this activity in a grand style and all papers were published in the conference materials: “Geotechnical Engineering 20 – view of young European geotechnical engineers” together with the view of ISSMGE representatives (Prof. J.L. Briaud – president, Prof. J. Atkinson, the founder of these activities and Prof. S. Lacasse) who also played the role of discussion leaders. The delegates also positively accepted the presentation of two Czech specialists from the contractor’s firms. I am very glad that the tradition of the EYGEC conferences is very attractive as the colleagues from the Netherlands are prepared to arrange the next 21st EYGEC in Delft at the beginning of September 2011 and our colleagues from Sweden offered to arrange the following occasion in 2012.

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