6th International Conference on Forensic Geotechnical Engineering

The International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) constituted a Technical Committee (TC) on Forensic Geotechnical Engineering (FGE) in 2005. During the first four years it was designated as TC40 and is now designated as TC302. This committee conducted five international seminars on FGE and is now organizing the sixth conference during December 10-12, 2020 at IIT Delhi, India. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Indian Geotechnical Society Delhi Chapter together with TC 302 of ISSMGE are organizing the event. The theme of the event is “Forensic Geotechnical Engineering & Geo-Disaster Documentation”. The conference is supported by SPARC (Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration) of Government of India on the project “Advanced Technologies for Post-Disasters Reconnaissance, Forensic and Environmental Impact Studies - Geotechnical” which is a collaborative project among IIT Delhi, IISc, Bengaluru, Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, University of California, Davis and University of Cambridge. Forensic geotechnical engineering involves scientific, legalistic investigations and deductions to detect the causes as well as the process of distress in a structure, which are attributed to geotechnical origin. Such a critical analysis will provide answers to “what went wrong, when, where, why, how, and by whom”. Cases of remedied installations, particularly those which, fall under public / or government category, where the analysis and evaluation of adopted remedial measures with regard to their effectiveness and economy may be subjected to judicial scrutiny also, fall under this purview. It also gives strong inputs to improve designs. The normally adopted standard procedures of testing, analysis, design and construction are not adequate for the forensic analysis in majority of cases. The forensic investigations involve fresh field and laboratory tests apart from collection of all available data. The test parameters and design assumptions will have to be representative of the actual conditions encountered at site. While the designs are mostly stress based, the forensic analysis has to be deformation based. The forensic geotechnical engineer (who is different than the expert witness) has to be not only thorough in his field of specialization, but also be familiar with legal procedures.