An interview with Dr. Moh was made in Taipei on November 14th, 2012. As is well known, Dr. Moh has made remarkable achievements in the fields of education at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), practice through his consulting firm, and societal activities in the Southeast Asian Geotechnical Society of which he is the founder.

During the interview, the first topic was his recent activities and interests. In addition to infrastructure developments, he is concerned with projects of bigger scales. Moreover, he believes that future geotechnical engineering should pay more attention to disaster mitigation. Design of disaster prevention/mitigation structures is one of his target businesses. From the viewpoint of the future geotechnical engineering, he mentioned that GIS will be a useful tool. Another future direction is “Green Design” by which clean and ecological community is developed. He is doing practice internationally on design of office buildings, subways, and even urban design. Risk analysis is another important topic of his activity.

The second topic was his good memory of geotechnical engineering. His best memory is that he took Karl Terzaghi’s course in his final year at Harvard. His lecture showed many slides of photographs. While Dr. Moh’s advisor was Prof. Lamb, Terzaghi also visited MIT occasionally and gave many valuable advices to him and other students. Dr. Moh states that Terzaghi had a very wide range of knowledge including soil chemistry.

After his degree from MIT, Dr. Moh worked for Woodward-Clyde and then moved to Yale University. It was this time that AIT was recruiting academic staffs for the new development of geotechnical engineering division. Initially, he got an appointment for 18 months, which was later extended to 11 years. During t hat period, he obtained good supports from AIT and installed good educational programs and equipments. He devoted enthusiastically to AIT as a vice president.

After AIT, he turned to practice. At the beginning, only he and his brother worked together. The first job was the restoration of runway pavement in the Taipei Airport. A 6m*6m panel of an existing pavement was removed, the subsoil was compacted, and the new pavement was cured. The challenge was that the entire process had to be completed in six hours during the night when no flight was scheduled. He recalls one night when a typhoon unexpectedly attacked the site, irrespective of the weather forecast, where new concrete had just been cast. It is still his good memory that next morning Boeing 747 safely landed on his brand-new pavement. Another good achievement of his was a construction of tunnel at only 6 meters below an airport runway. This job was successfully done without affecting the operation of the airport. With these achievements, his company grew to an international giant.

Finally, the interviewer made a request to Dr. Moh to give valuable advices to younger generations. He is afraid that recent fresh bachelors are not so much interested in basic academic issues as before, possibly because their lives are too easy. To improve this situation, his company takes care of 6-month internship for master students from abroad. He believes that an internship for 6 weeks, which is often the case for undergraduate students, is too short.

During the interview, the interviewer felt that Dr. Moh maintains his deep interest and strong enthusiasm in soil and geotechnical matters. It is desired that Dr. Moh will keep playing important roles in the world of geotechnical engineering and even in other areas.

by Ikuo Towhata

AGSSEA – Biodata of Chairman – Dr. Za Chieh Moh

 SEAGS – Biodata of President and Past Presidents 2015

Dear Colleagues,

Last time I wrote a message for your attention in the ISSMGE Bulletin was nearly one year ago.

In the meantime, the ISSMGE and geotechnical activities throughout the world have developed satisfactorily.

As planned, our five Regional Conferences on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering took place in 2015 and all of them were very successful. The following reports can be found in the issues of the ISSMGE Bulletin:

– for the XVI African Regional Conference in Hammamet, Tunisia, see:

http://issmge2014.ust.hk/~issmge/aug2015/3a.Conference_Report.pdf

– for the XVI European Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, see:

http://issmge2014.ust.hk/~issmge/oct2015/4a.Conference_report_ECSMGE.pdf

– for the 15th Asian Regional Conference in Fukuoka, Kyushu, Japan, see:

http://issmge2014.ust.hk/~issmge/feb2016/5a.Conference_report_1.pdf

The reports for the 12th Australia and New Zealand Conference in Wellington, New Zealand and for the XV Pan American Conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, should also be published very soon.

We are now already in the process of preparing for the 19th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (19th ICSMGE) which will be held next year in Seoul, 17-22 September 2017. The call for abstracts has been launched earlier this year and the Members Societies are now asked to forward them to the Conference Organising Committee by the end of May 2016. The format of the Conference will be very similar to the 18th ICSMGE Paris, September 2013. After two days of plenary sessions, there will be two days of parallel sessions. In the plenary sessions, 11 Technical Committees of the ISSMGE (TCs) have requested and been given slots in which to deliver original Honours Lectures. These can be seen in the conference programme (http://www.icsmge2017.org/program/program_01.asp). The parallel sessions will be organised by the TCs themselves either in the form of Discussion Sessions (dealing with the written contributions sent by the Members Societies) or in the form of Workshops (proposed and organised by the TCs).

There are now a total of 14 ISSMGE Honours Lectures under the responsibility of the corresponding TCs (see: http://www.issmge.org/en/awards/honour-lectures) and these lectures often feature within conferences organised by the TCs of in other speciality events. The most recent Honours Lecture created (February 2016) is the John Burland Lecture proposed by the TC306 on Geo-Engineering Education.

The Board of the ISSMGE, together with the Chairs of the Board Level Committees met in September 2015 in Edinburgh, on the occasion of the XVI European Conference, hosted by the British Geotechnical Association (BGA) and then in Phoenix (Arizona) in February 2016 on the occasion of the Geo-Structures Congress of the ASCE, hosted by the Geo-Institute (the US Member Society).

The Council of the ISSMGE held its mid-term meeting in Edinburgh on Sunday 13th September 2016, the day before the opening of the European Conference. Currently there were 89 Member Societies and 72 of them were allowed to vote. Unfortunately in the meeting only 52 Members Societies were present or represented (through proxies). The main decisions taken were:

– the life of a Technical Committee of the ISSMGE is no more linked to the presidential term of office (the corresponding amendment to bylaw 16.1 was voted unanimously);

– to accept the new Cooperation Agreement for the FedIGS (Federation of the International Geo-Engineering Societies) which confirms a much lighter structure than the one envisaged in the initial agreement in 2007 (there were 42 votes in favour, 6 against and 4 abstentions).

Since the Council meeting a 90th Member Society has joined the ISSMGE: the Algerian Geotechnical Society (ALGEOS). Warm welcome to the ALGEOS: we are very pleased to have you with us!

During this last year the ISSMGE has pursued its strong commitment (“battle”!) for Open Access to geotechnical literature. More and more often the organisers of geotechnical conferences are encouraged to negotiate with the publishers of the proceedings so that free access to all the papers is allowed through an appropriate electronic link or through uploading on the ISSMGE website. It can be anticipated that the corresponding resources on our website will increase sharply in the coming years. It is one of the reasons for which we are presently in the process of redesigning the ISSMGE website. This work is done under the leadership of the Innovation and Development Committee, chaired by Dimitrios Zekkos. We shall have more news about this action very soon now.

Allow me to encourage you strongly to look at the series of Webinars which are on the ISSMGE website (see: http://www.issmge.org/en/resources/recorded-webinars). There are 5 more webinars delivered by: Prof. Richard Jardine, Prof. An-Bin Huang, Prof. George Gazetas, Prof. Samuel I.K. Ampadu and Prof. Lyesse Laloui. We are truly grateful to our colleagues who accept to devote their time to the ISSMGE and share their knowledge with us in an outstanding manner.

A lot of effort has also been devoted in 2015 by the Corporate Associates Presidential Group, chaired by Sukumar Pathmanandavel and the Technical Oversight Committee, chaired by Pierre Delage in order to discuss and hopefully narrow the gap between the state of practice and the state-of-the-art in geotechnical engineering. In particular, a very successful break-out session was organised in Edinburgh between ISSMGE TCs and CAs representatives. A companion message from Sukumar and Pierre, summarising the various actions in 2015, is included in the April 2016 issue of the ISSMGE Bulletin.

I wish to all of you the best in your geotechnical activities and… in your other activities!

Roger Frank

15th March 2016
 Message for ISSMGE Bulletin- 15 March 2016

Ooi Teik Aun

IEM Members

Proceedings of the 19th Southeast Asian Geotechnical Conference & 2nd AGSSEA Conference, 31 May-3 June 2016, Malaysia

New Zealand – Japan Workshop on Soil Liquefaction during
Recent Large-Scale Earthquakes

A/Prof Rolando P Orense (University of Auckland, NZ)

The 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand and the 2011 off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku Earthquake in Japan have caused significant damage to many residential houses due to varying degrees of soil liquefaction over a very wide extent of urban areas unseen in past destructive earthquakes. Although these earthquakes caused extensive damage to life and property, they also serve as an opportunity to understand better the response of soil and building foundations to such large-scale earthquake shaking. With the wealth of information obtained in the aftermath of both earthquakes, information-sharing and knowledge-exchange are vital in achieving liquefaction-proof urban areas in both countries. Data regarding the observed damage to residential houses as well and the lessons learnt and current research on the topic of liquefaction are essential for the rebuilding efforts in the coming years and in mitigating buildings located in regions with high liquefaction potential.

As part of MBIE-JSPS collaborative research programme, the Geomechanics Group of the University of Auckland and the Geotechnical Engineering Laboratory of the University of Tokyo co-hosted a workshop to bring together researchers to review the findings and observations from recent large-scale earthquakes related to soil liquefaction and discuss new research results and possible measures to mitigate future damage. This workshop was held at the Faculty of Engineering building, University of Auckland, New Zealand on December 2 – 3, 2013. This event, which was attended by more than 80 researchers, engineers and practitioners from the local industry, involved invited presentations from 20 soil liquefaction experts from Japan, the United States, Chile and New Zealand. The highlight of the workshop was the two discussion sessions, one at the end of each day, which focused on current soil liquefaction issues, such as soil/site characterisation, liquefaction susceptibility and triggering, liquefaction-induced ground deformations, effects on structures and countermeasures. The final workshop proceedings will be published by CRC Press / Taylor & Francis Ltd in mid-2014.

Photographs taken during the workshop are shown below.

Photo 1 Group photograph of participants

Download ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume  7 Issue 6 (pp. 59-60)
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Ongoing Study on Protection of Personal Houses from
Liquefaction Problems

Ikuo Towhata Professor, Department of Civil engineering, the University of Tokyo
Kazuo Konagai Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo
Takashi Kiyota Associate Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo

INTRODUCTION

Two years are going to pass after the M=9 gigantic earthquake in Japan that took place on March 11, 2011. Because the earthquake damage caused many new problems, attempts for reconstruction are still going on, and one of the very difficult problems concerns the liquefaction damage on personal properties. Because the authors had an opportunity to present their study during the 4th International Symposium on Forensic Geotechnical Engineering, Bangalore, India, in January, 2013, they re-write their paper for this issue of ISSMGE Bulletin. It is aimed to discuss what has been missing in the traditional kind of geotechnical earthquake engineering.

Traditional technology on mitigation of liquefaction problems started to develop in 1960s after two earthquake disasters in Alaska and Niigata. Many achievements have been made with rational or sophisticated approaches such as the use of SPT-N or CPT for subsoil investigations, collection of undisturbed soil samples for laboratory tests, and densification or grouting or installation of gravel drains for damage mitigation by using big construction machines. Consequently, the vulnerability of many structures have been drastically reduced in the recent times and the earthquake in 2011 caused few liquefaction problems in engineered important structures. It is, however, noteworthy that those measures are feasible only when sufficient financial resources are available.

During the earthquakes in 2010 and 2011, liquefaction affected such structures as river levees (Photo 1), embedded life lines (Photo 2), and personal houses (see the next chapter). Those structures are characterized by their limited budgets that are available for disaster mitigation. Levees and lifelines are too long for the overall reinforcement against subsoil liquefaction. Their construction cost per unit length does not allow the significant reinforcement either. Consequently, the disaster management philosophy in the past aimed to restore any seismic damage within a short period of time after a quake.

Photo 1. Liquefaction damage in Hinuma levee

Photo 2. Disconnection of sewage pipeline and deposit of sand after liquefaction (damage study in Tokyo Bay area, 2011)

Download ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 6 Issue 6 (pp. 8-17)
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The Japanese Geotechnical Society has published “Geo-hazards During Earthquakes and Mitigation Measures -Lessons and Recommendations from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake-“. It covers the following contents and can be downloaded from:
http://www.jiban.or.jp/e/disaster-survey-information-of-2011-tohoku-earthquake-2/

1. Introduction
2. Impact of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake
3. Characteristics of Geo-hazards, Issues Arising and Recommendations
4. Issues for Future Examination and Research

Application of various geotechnical technologies, as typically illustrated blow, are proposed to prevent and reduce geo-disasters.

ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 5 Issue 6 (pp.24-27)
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VISIT OF ATC3 COMMITTEE ON SLOPE INSTABILITY SITES IN BHUTAN

Ikuo Towhata, University of Tokyo, towhata@geot.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Mitsu Okamura, Ehime University, okamura@cee.ehime-u.ac.jp
Hirofumi Toyota, Nagaoka University of Technology, toyota@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp

INTRODUCTION

Asian member societies of ISSMGE have been operating several technical committees of their own and among those committees is ATC3 that concerns geotechnical natural hazards. In the current 4 years of term, this committee is chaired by Ikuo Towhata and is working on slope problems. As a part of the ATC3 activities, three committee members made a visit to Bhutan from October 18th, 2011, to 25th, and carried out some studies in collaboration with the Department of Geology and Mines of Bhutan Government and DHI-Infra Ltd.

Figure 1 illustrates the general idea of the Kingdom of Bhutan which ranges from the lowland at its Indian border to the top of Himalaya. The size of Bhutan is 38,400 km2 in area and its population is 700 thousands. Because of the tectonic action between the Indian Ocean Plate and the Eurasian Plate, the geology in Bhutan is highly distorted and fractured, which makes mountain slopes highly vulnerable to instability problems. The precipitation rate is 3,000 to 5,000 mm in the southern lowland, 1,200 to 2,000 mm in the lower Himalayan slopes, 500 to 1,000 mm in the central mountain regions, and less than 500 mm in Himalaya. Most precipitation takes place during the monsoon season of June to September.

Fig. 1 Map of Kingdom of Bhutan.

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Ikuo Towhata, Professor, University of Tokyo Hiroyuki Goto, Assistant Professor, Kyoto University Motoki Kazama, Professor, Tohoku University, Sendai Takashi Kiyota, Assistant Professor, University of Tokyo
Susumu Nakamura, Professor, Nihon University, Fukushima
Kazue Wakamatsu, Professor, Kanto Gakuin University, Yokohama
Akihiko Wakai, Professor, Gunma University, Kiryu
Susumu Yasuda, Professor, Tokyo Denki University, Saitama
Nozomu Yoshida, Professor, Tohoku Gakuin University, Tagajo

INTRODUCTION

At 2:46 PM local time on March 11th, 2011, a gigantic earthquake of magnitude Mw=9.0 occurred and affected the eastern half of Japan. Because the seismological aspects of this earthquake have been reported at many web sites and publications, the present report puts emphasis on the damage aspects that have so far been revealed by the post-earthquake investigations. This report is a contribution made by many members of the Japanese Geotechnical Society.

The causative fault of this earthquake is located in the Pacific Ocean off east Japan where an oceanic tectonic plate has been subsiding under the archipelago (Fig. 1). In the area of Sendai City, that is one of the biggest cities in the eastern part of Japan, there had been warning about a possible big earthquake in the coming years. It was anticipated that a part of the plate subduction to the east of Japan would cause this extreme event. The reality was, however, more than anticipated, the size of the causative mechanism being 500 km in length in the NS direction and the width being 200 km.

Fig. 1 Location of causative mechanism and major damage areas (Fault model by National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention)

In modern times, two gigantic earthquakes have been reported in this part of subduction. The one in 1896 registered the seismic magnitude (M) of 8.2 to 8.5 and the associating tsunami killed 21,915 victims together with 44 missing. The other one in 1933 was of M=8.1 (Mw=8.4) and claimed 1522 victims with 1542 missing. Both earthquakes caused minor intensity of shaking. Another tsunami disaster in the same area was caused by the 1960 Chile earthquake of Mw=9.5 and 142 people were killed. Those experiences encouraged both public and private sectors to be prepared for future tsunami disasters by constructing high sea walls and conducting tsunami evacuation drills, in which the height of future tsunami was decided on the basis of previous tsunamis. Despite those efforts, the present earthquake produced much bigger tsunami over the entire coast of east Japan (Fig. 1). It is often said that the 2011 earthquake is of similar size and effect as the Jogan earthquake in AD 869 that hit the same area and produced huge tsunami damage.

Download ISSMGE Bulletin – Volume 5  Issue 2 (pp. 46-66)

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