Management of geotechnical data and processes

This General Report reviews the topic of Management of Geotechnical Data and Processes based on the papers submitted to the 17th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Alexandria, Egypt. The contributors agree thatdata standards are needed to allow interchangeability and sharing of geotechnical data. Hence, developments in data representation using XML are outlined that will allow the World Wide Web to become an international repository for geo-engineering information. XML provides the flexibility needed for representing heterogeneous data obtained from field monitoring. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) provide great opportunities for geotechnical engineers, particularly for the storage of large amounts of borehole data. The need for handling uncertainty and managing risk in geotechnical engineering is highlighted. Risk sharing should ensure that each risk is assumed by the party best able to control it, given their technical competence and contractual commitments. Risk mitigation measures need to be put in place when the risk level is high. Event Tree Analysis provides a useful way of assessing risk levels, and can incorporate expertise from different disciplines. Greater amounts of site investigation data will reduce the probability of under-or over-design of geotechnical structures, although there may be an optimum point beyond which further data will provide limitedimprovement. The degree of uncertainty in geotechnical engineering is evident from abenchmarking exercise for seismic site response analysis that showed variations of up to 4100% between participating teams, making assessments from the same input datasets. Specific examples and case studies are described in the application areas of Slopes & Landslides and Seismic HazardAssessment.