Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to represent Geotechnical Society of Singapore (GeoSS) at the Asian Young Geotechnical Engineer's conference (AYGEC). The 25 years tradition of AYGEC started in 1991 with its first conference in Bangkok and now it has reached its 8th edition.
Along with 2 representatives from Singapore (myself and Ms. Sue Cing from Golder Associates, Singapore office), there were 45 young engineers representing 17 different Asian countries. Apart from young engineers, there were 4 keynote/special lectures by senior professionals/academicians from German Geotechnical Society, Japan Geotechnical society and Korean Geotechnical society. In total there were more than 75 delegates from 24 countries [1].
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| 8AYGEC, Astana Kazakhstan |
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| Distribution of participants (17 countries | 29% from industry, remaining from academia) |
Two presentations by Singapore representatives were on the topic:
- Mid-Tunnel underground docking of Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) in Singapore - presented by me
- Two-lane vehicle underpass using pipe roof method at Sentosa Gateway Tunnel - presented by Ms. Sue Cing Teo
The conference theme was aligned with the objectives of ISSMGE Technical Committee - TC305 (Geotechnical Infrastructure for megacities and new capitals). Both the presentations from Singapore were apt for this theme. Our presentations were well received and appreciated by the senior professors from Korea, Japan and Kazakhstan.
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| Representatives of GeoSS at 8AYGEC |
The venue for the conference was split between Nazarbayev University and Eurasian National University in Astana, Kazakhstan. The conference had one dedicated session on Underground Urban infrastructure. Other sessions of the conference were focused on laboratory and field tests, recent trends in ground improvement, numerical modeling, advanced soil mechanics and geotechnics of historical monuments.
The 2 day conference culminated with field visit on Day 3. The main highlight of the technical visit was the visit to the construction site of EXPO 2017 - a 113 hectares international exposition pavilion. Unfortunately we could not see much of the activities due to weather conditions and safety concerns.
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| Artistic view of EXPO 2017 (after completion) |
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| EXPO 2017 (in construction) |
The collection of peer-reviewed papers presented during this conference are published by CRC Press (Taylor and Francis) Publishers, UK and is available here.
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| Challenges and Innovations in Geotechnics (ISBN 9781138030077) |
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| My presentation on Mid-Tunnel TBM Docking |
Since all the delegates were of same age group, it resulted in a very lively engagement, discussion and exchange of business cards (and FB handles too) during the networking sessions. The official closure of the conference was eventful with Kazakhstan music and dance. PhD thesis work of Dr. Prashanth Vangla (representative of Indian Geotechnical Society from IISc Bangalore) received the best paper award and Dr. Atsushi Takai (Asst. Professor, Kyoto University, Japan) received the best presenter award. Apart from few hiccups, the conference was very well planned and moderated by Prof. Askar.
References:
[1] Online article, "The outcome of 8AYGEC" available at: http://www.enu.kz/en/info/news/44808/ (retrieved 20th Aug, 2016)
