A federal judge ruled that the property owners can’t sue Pulte homes for the failure of a retaining wall and a subsequent slope movement (they refer to it as a landslide). The failure occurred in […]
On 22 October, 2012, an Italian court convicted six internationally respected scientists of manslaughter. The scientists Enzo Boschi, Giulio Selvaggi, Franco Barberi, Claudio Eva, Mauro Dolce, and Gian Michele Calvi have been sentenced to prison terms, barred from public office, and ordered to pay court costs and damages.
Their offense could have been avoided by precisely predicting the timing and nature of the tragic 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila. However, such precise, short-term earthquake prediction of the type evidently sought by L’Aquila is currently impossible. Because of the ungainly complexity of earthquake systems, knowledge of physical details is incomplete; the diverse expressions of earthquake processes deliver contradictory messages; and measurements of earthquake phenomena can be inaccurate. Glaringly, the indictment accused the scientists of having provided “incomplete”, “contradictory”, and “inaccurate” information.
[Editor] Click through for the rest of the press release from the GSA. [/Editor]
Gregg Drilling has started a series of educational webinars on cone penetration testing or CPT. The first webinar, “Introduction to CPT” was offered in September is now available in video form. The next session entitled […]
Significant flooding in the the UK towards the end of September caused the collapse of a culvert on private property that sent a torrent of water towards the residential structure pictured here. The flood caused […]
In a ruling that has rocked the geophysical community, six Italian scientists and one government official have been sentenced to 6 years in prison for failing to give adequate warning of a 2009 earthquake that […]
Geotextile tubes are filled by pumping material in slurry form into the tube to form structures that can be used as breakwaters, levees, or other containment structures. TenCate has a new product that much improves […]
The Army Corps of Engineers announced last month that 17 levee systems in central California totaling 180 miles will be inelligible for federal rehabilitation assistance in the event they are damaged in a flood. This […]
FEMA has recently released a new document titled “Summary of Existing Guidelines for Hydrologic Safety of Dams”. I was pleased to hear about this report from one of it’s co-authors, Amanda Hess of Gannett Fleming. […]
The Kingdom Tower to be built in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia will be 1,001 meters tall when completed in 2018. It will be the first building taller than 1-km and 173 meters taller than the Burj […]
Geotechnical engineers, geotechnical lab managers, CQA service managers and others utilize ASTM standards on a daily basis. Here at GeoPrac.net, we monitor the periodic updates from ASTM and summarize changes to relevant standards that may be of interest to geoprofessionals. Click through for a list of revised and reapproved standards from September of 2012.
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