20
Geotechnical News • September 2017
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Introduction by John Dunnicliff, Editor
This is the 90
th
episode of GIN. Two articles this time.
In red book Chapter 15, I put forward
a “recipe for reliability of performance
monitoring”, and suggested that
the ingredients in the recipe can be
divided into two categories:
instru-
ment ingredients
and
people ingredi-
ents.
Others have used the term
human
factors
to mean the same as the second
category. In my experience the two
categories are of equal importance,
but very often insufficient attention is
given to the human factors, resulting
in failure of the monitoring program.
The first article in this episode of GIN
is about human factors; the second is
about instruments.
Human factors
will be one of the
symposium themes during the 10th
International Symposium on Geome-
chanics (FMGM) in Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil in July 2018:
.
com/2018. Because “very often
insufficient attention is given to the
human factors”, please consider very
carefully contributing a paper about
these to the 10th FMGM: open the
above website and click on the “Call
for Papers” tab. Abstracts are due by
November 4, 2017.
System checks
The first article, by Isabella Ramaccia
and David Cook, describes “System
Checks” to test whether installed
instruments for displacement monitor-
ing provide correct data. In my view
this is a very important subject, and
one that is too often overlooked.
More on remote monitoring of
displacement
In March 2017 GIN I summarized
earlier GIN articles on this subject,
and included an article about manual
reflectorless total station monitor-
ing (MRTS). Here’s another one, this
time about global navigation satellite
system (GNSS) for landslide monitor-
ing, by Zhangwei Ning and Marc Fish.
The authors conclude that a GNSS
system specially designed for geotech-
nical instrumentation and monitor-
ing purposes is capable of achieving
millimeter-scale precision at accept-
able cost and low power needs.
“
Deformation
”
or
“
displacement
”
?
If you’re a regular reader of GIN (or
of other scribblings by the editor),
you may have noticed that I’ve now
replaced the word “deformation” by
“displacement”. Since moving from
USA to England nearly 20 years ago,
my European colleagues have been
encouraging me to make this change
— they’re right — it’s a better word!
Fourth International Course on
Geotechnical and Structural
Monitoring
The fourth course was held in Rome,
Italy in June this year. We had a record
attendance: 140 from 31 different
countries. The total attendance for the
four courses to date (2013-2017) has
been 440 from 49 different countries.
We haven’t yet decided on the venue
and date for the 2108 course — watch
this space!
One of the regular speakers at the
courses wrote to me after Rome, as
part of our discussion about what to
do next time: “The course and FMGM
[held once every four years] are the
only two opportunities that monitoring
people have to meet and discuss. We
can have different opinions about the
structure of the course or the location
or the selected speakers, but
we have
the course!
This is more important
than the structure, the location, and the
speakers”. I like that!
Names of villages in England
There are many delightful ones: I’ve
just returned from a visit to Upper
Slaughter and Lower Slaughter in the
Cotswolds, in the county of Glouces-
tershire (pronounced
Glostersheer
).
The word ‘Slaughter’ stems from
the Old English name for a wet land
‘slough’ or ‘slothre’ (Old English for
muddy place).
Fascinating are the names of some
villages in the county of Dorset,
all within about five miles of each
other: The most well-known one of
the villages is Tolpuddle, famous for
the “Tolpudle Martyrs”, who were
a group of 19th-century agricultural
labourers who were arrested for and
convicted of swearing a secret oath
as members of the ‘Friendly Society
of Agricultural Labourers’. At that
time ‘Friendly Societies’ had strong
elements of what are now considered
to be the predominant role of trade
unions. In 1834 the Tolpuddle Martyrs
were sentenced to ‘penal transpor-
tation’ (expatriation) to Australia.
Names of nearby villages include:
• Puddletown (alternatively called
Piddletown — I kid you not — it’s
on the river Piddle). The name
Puddletown means ‘farmstead on
the River Piddle’. It derives from
the Old English
pidele
, a river-
name meaning fen or marsh, and
tūn
, meaning farmstead
• Briantspuddle
• Affpuddle
• Piddletrenthide
• Piddlehinton
• Turners Puddle
Closure
Please send an abstract of an article
for GIN to
co.uk—see the guidelines on www.
geotechnicalnews.com/instrumenta-
tion_news.php
Yeghes da! (Cornish — Cornwall
is most south-westerly county in
England, neighboring Devon, where
I live).
