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Geotechnical News • September 2014
www.geotechnicalnews.com
GEO-INTEREST
International Course on Geotechnical and
Structural Monitoring
Poppi, Tuscany, Italy – June 2014
John Gadsby
Continuing education courses on
Geotechnical Instrumentation for
Field Measurements have been held
in either Missouri or Florida every
second year for the past 40 years, with
John Dunnicliff as the course director.
That series of courses has now been
replaced by an annual course in Tus-
cany, Italy—the first edition took place
in June this year. The theme of 2014
course was changed to Geotechnical
and Structural Monitoring (GSM), and
billed as an International course. The
course was directed by John Dunni-
cliff and organized by Paolo Mazzanti
of NHAZCA (Natural Hazards Control
and Assessment) - spin off of “Sapi-
enza” University of Rome.
Poppi is about 40 km east of Flor-
ence and about 30 km northwest of
Arezzo. Poppi is considered one of the
most beautiful towns in Tuscany with
the spectacular tenth-century castle
of the Guidi Counts situated on the
hilltop that dominates the surrounding
countryside. The course was held in
the castle.
The GSM was truly an international
gathering and probably the most
international for any engineering short
course. The course attracted some 100
participants from 27 countries with
18 different languages. The language
of the course was English and yet for
80% of the attendees this was their
second language.
The three-day course covered three
principal topics: basic concepts of
monitoring; types of geotechnical
and structural instrumentation; case
histories and the lessons learned. In
contrast to the Florida courses GSM
included substantial content on remote
monitoring systems such as GPS,
Laser and Radar systems, with a look
also at satellite monitoring.
The presentations were given by an
international group of leaders in the
geotechnical and structural monitoring
community. All lectures were given
using a standard PowerPoint template
that gave a uniformity and clarity to
the presentations.
The section on case histories covered
a wide range of monitoring programs
for almost every type of engineering
structure. These case histories illus-
trated the importance and diversity of
geotechnical and structural monitoring
projects and the advances made in the
past 60 years.
The 2014 edition of GSM was a great
success. Anyone in the monitoring
community should add this course to
his/her list of “to dos” for the follow-
ing reasons:
• It is the only comprehensive course
on geotechnical and structural
monitoring:
• It is exceptionally well organized;
Tenth century Poppi Castle.