Dear All,
We must congratulate Tuk Lal Adhikari President of the Nepalese Geotechnical Society with many AIT Alumni and Engineers in Nepal the Geo-Hazard 2014: Excellent Key Note spekers and special Lectures as well as papers wil be presented. More details below:
Geohazard_2014: 0-21 November, International Symposium Geohazards 2014 in Kathmandu, Nepal: Jointly organized by Nepal Geotechnical Society and ATC-3 of ISSMGE. More details appear in website: http://www.ngeotechs.org/ngs/index.php/geohazards-2014
2014.10.14 The Scientific Committee of Geohazards 2014 has come up with a nearly final list of papers to be presented in the symposium. As of today, there will be altogether 59 papers including two keynote lectures and four special lectures. Moreover, there will be 28 papers on landslide and flood-related topics, 21 papers on earthquake-related topics, two papers on ground subsidence-related topics, and eight papers on various geotechnical and disaster topics. These papers have been contributed from 11 countries: 24 from Japan, 5 from South Korea, 1 from China, 2 from Italy, 1 from Spain, 1 from Germany, 1 from Kyrgyzstan, 1 from Kazakhstan, 1 from Austria, 10 from India, and 12 from Nepal. Please click the link below to check the list of papers.
2014.10.1 Trumer Schutzbauten, an Austrian company working in the field of slope hazard mitigation, e.g., rockfall protection, avalanche protection, slope stabilization, debris barrier, gabions, etc. will be the prime sponsor of Geohazards 2014. The symposium will also be sponsored by a few local organizations involved in geotechnical engineering and disaster risk reduction.
Organizing Committee
Honorary Chair: Ikuo Towhata, ISSMGE Vice President (Asia)
Co-chairs:
Akkal Bahadur Singh, Immediate Past President, Nepal Geotechnical Society
Motoki Kazama, Chairman, ISSMGE ATC-3
Tuk Lal Adhikari, ITECO Nepal
Netra Prakash Bhandary, Ehime University, Japan
Indu Sharma Dhakal, Nepal Geotechnical Society
Bishwa Ranjan Shahi, Nepal Geotechnical Society
Niraj Acharya, Nepal Geotechnical Society
Him Jyoti Thapa, Road Development Board, Nepal
Narayan Gurung, Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association
Padam Bahadur Khadka, Institute of Engineering, TU, Nepal
Akhilesh Kumar Karna, Geotechnical Engineer (Freelancer), Nepal
Sanzay Jha, BEAM Consultant Pvt Ltd, Nepal
Binod Tiwari, California State University Fullerton, USA
Tara Nidhi Lohani, Kobe University, Japan
Tara Nidhi Bhattarai, Trichandra Campus, TU, Nepal
Hemanta Hazarika, Kyushu University, Japan
Amod Mani Dixit, NSET
Ramesh Guragain, NSET
Gangalal Tuladhar, Himalaya Conservation Group
Hari Krishna Shrestha, Himalayan Landslide Society
Ahyutananda Bhandary, Nepal Landslide Society
Vishnu Dangol, Nepal Landslide Society
Dinesh Pathak, Nepal Geological Society
Youb Raj Paudyal, Department of Education, Nepal
Dhundi Raj Pathak, Nepal Geotechnical Society
Basanta Raj Adhikari, Institute of Engineering, TU
Bindu Khanal Paudel, Nepal Engineering College
Buddhi Raj Joshi, School of Engineering, Pokhara University
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Ikuo Towhata
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Vice President, International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (Asia)
President, The Japanese Geotechnical Society
Lecture Topic:
Strategy for mitigation and early warning of rain-induced slope failure
Prof. Ikuo Towhata (Japan) is a world-known geotechnical engineering professor, currently serving the University of Tokyo. Involved actively in international research activities, Prof. Towhata holds a position of Vice President of International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) for Asian Region for a period of four years beginning 2013. Also, on 12 June 2014, he has been elected the President of the Japanese Geotechnical Society (JGS) for two years.
Prof. Towhata entered the University of Tokyo in 1973 as an undergraduate student and spent almost nine years until he received a Doctor of Engineering degree in 1982. Immediately after graduation, he joined the University of Tokyo the same year as a Research Associate. Since 1994, he has been serving this university as a professor. Besides, he has a year of experience as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia in 1982-1983, and in 1985, he served Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok for two years as an Assistant Professor.
A member of six national/international scientific/professional societies and honored with many prestigious awards and prizes, Prof. Towhata has a record of authored/co-authored highly valued publication list of about 400 papers in national and international journals and conference proceedings. His research interest and expertise include: 1) deformation characteristics of cohesionless soils, 2) dynamic analysis of earth structures during earthquakes, 3) permanent displacement of ground caused by seismic liquefaction, 4) soil improvement by densification and grouting, 5) stability of seabed in static and dynamic manners, 6) thermal effects on mechanical behavior of clays, 7) microscopic observation of granular behavior of sand subjected to shear, 8) dynamics of landslide and debris flow, 9) mechanical properties of municipal waste ground, 10) seismic performance-based design of geotechnical structures, and 11) mitigation of rainfall-induced slope instability.
As a matter of fact, Prof. Towhata has remained one of the key persons and the motivators towards organizing this international symposium, as a support to promoting the geotechnical engineering activities in developing nations. To honor his involvement with this international event, the organizers have used his great good name as the Honorary Chair of the organizing committee.
Amod Mani Dixit
Executive Director, National Society for Earthquake Technology, Nepal
Lecture Topic:
Earthquake disaster risk management efforts in Nepal
Dr. Amod Mani Dixit (Nepal) is a leading earthquake disaster management professional, involved in this field for the past 20 years. A geologist by academic background, Dr. Dixit has demonstrated to the world, especially to the nations that have tremendously suffered from earthquake disasters or hold a high risk of earthquake disaster in near future that an individual desire can always make a change. He currently leads a non-governmental organization in Nepal, which in these 20 years has demonstrated that a well-managed and dedicated organization is also possible in a resource lacking place like Nepal.
Dr. Dixit was recently awarded a Doctor of Engineering degree by Ehime University of Japan in recognition of his research study in the field of earthquake disaster risk management focusing in Nepal. He has a Bachelor-cum-Master degree from the Leningrad Mining University, Russia (1973), and also has Master of Science degree from Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok. His work experience includes about 18 years of government service (Department of Mines and Geology, Nepal), 11 years of parallel consulting service to an engineering consulting firm, and 20 years with National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET), a non-governmental organization established by himself and his team members back in 1993.
Dr. Dixit has an authored/co-authored publication record of about 70 papers including national and international conference proceedings, books and book chapters, and renowned international journals. He and his organization NSET have not only contributed to Nepal and Nepalese community but also have made a great name in the world in the field of earthquake disaster risk management.
Special Lecturers
Simonetta Cola
Professor, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Padova, Italy
Lecture Topic:
Monitoring of the Tessina landslide in the Italian Alps to improve prediction criteria
Prof. Dr. Simonetta Cola is a Professor of geotechnical engineering at University of Padova (UniPD), Italy. She is currently the Director of Geotechnical Laboratory as well as the Laboratory of Physical Modelling for Geotechnics at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering of UniPD.
Prof. Cola holds a master degree with honors in civil engineering and a PhD in geotechnical Engineering (1994). Before joining the current academic position, she has an experience of working as a consulting engineer at ISMES in Bergamo, Italy (1990), and she served Imperial College of London as a visiting professor back in 1995. She currently teaches Geotechnics, Soil and Rock Mechanics, Soil Improvement and Earth Construction.
Prof. Cola is extensively involved in international collaboration at UniPD, such as with the Sheffield University, Imperial College of London (UK), University of California (Berkeley), and Università Politecnica of Madrid (Spain). She is a reviewer for various renowned international journals, such as Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (ASCE), Geological and Geotechnical Engineering Journal, etc. She also is a member in the ISSMGE Technical Committees No. 201 (Geotechnical Aspects of Dykes and Levees, Shore Protection and Land Reclamation). Her main fields of research interest include experimental analysis and constitutive modelling of natural heterogeneous soils, geotechnical properties of organic soils, discrete models applied to geotechnical problems, stability analysis of natural slopes and their stabilization, deep-mixing, soil nailing, and mudflows.
Susumu Yasuda
Professor, Tokyo Denki University, Japan
Lecture Topic:
Hazard maps on liquefaction-induced damage to houses in Tokyo Bay area evaluated by representative soil profile models
Prof. Dr. Susumu YASUDA is senior faculty of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tokyo Denki University. Born in 1948, Prof. Yasuda received his B.S. in civil engineering from Kyushu Institute of Technology (Japan), and his Doctor of Engineering in civil engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1975. Following his Doctor of Engineering degree, he worked at Kiso-Jiban Consultants Co. as a geotechnical consulting engineer. He then joined Kyushu Institute of Technology in 1986, and moved to Tokyo Denki University in 1994.
Prof. Yasuda’s main research interest is soil liquefaction during earthquakes. He has visited many different countries to investigate the damage due to liquefaction. He has served the Japanese Geotechnical Society as Vice President from 2006 to 2007, and has been serving Japan Association for Earthquake Engineering as the President since 2013. In the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, he was the chairman of the Asian Technical Committee (ATC) No. 10 on Urban Geo-informatics from 2002 to 2006, and the chairman of the ATC No.3 on Geotechnology for Natural Hazards from 2006 to 2010.
Dong Soo Kim
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), S. Korea
Vice President, the Korean Geotechnical Society
Lecture Topic:
Ground motion evaluation for new site classification and response spectrum in Korean Seismic Code
Prof. Dr. Dong Soo Kim is a professor of geotechnical engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He also holds the position of Director at KOCED Geo-centrifuge Center of KAIST. A holder of bachelor (1983) and master (1985) degrees of Seoul National University of S. Korea in Civil Engineering, Prof. Kim is a PhD graduate (1991) of the University of Texas at Austin, USA with geotechnical engineering major.
Prof. Kim started his academic career from an Assistant Professor of Polytechnic University, New York in 1991 and worked there for three years. After that he has been serving KAIST starting from an Assistant Professor through Professor. Apart from his affiliation with KAIST, he is associated with Utah State University, USA as a visiting professor (2002-2003). Currently, Prof. Kim is also serving the Korean Geotechnical Society as one of the Vice Presidents, and chairs the Organizing Committee of the 19th ICSMGE-Seoul.
The major research interests of Prof. Kim include 1) physical modeling using geotechnical centrifuge and focusing on earthquake and off-shore geotechnical problems, 2) site and material property characterization using field and laboratory tests, and 3) soil dynamics and geotechnical earthquake engineering. He has an extensive publication record in various national and international journals and conference proceedings. So far, he has authored/co-authored more than 60 international journal papers, nearly 120 domestic journal papers, more than 140 international conference papers, and close to 90 domestic conference papers. In recognition of such an extensive research work, he has received various awards and prizes from domestic professional organizations.
Askar Zhussupbekov
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Eurasian National University, Kazakhstan
Former Vice President (Asia), International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE)
Lecture Topic:
Modeling of influence of the use of reinforcement to stability of the dams model at radial strains
Prof. Dr. Askar Zhussupgekov is a professor of geotechnical engineering at Eurasian National University of Kazakhstan
