Weekend CUP for April 20, 2010

Some juicy geoengineering news items in this post. I could turn just about all of them into a separate blog post if I had time, maybe I still will for some of them. Don’t miss this list! All of the links are active when you view it on the site. If you’re looking at this in your RSS feed reader or on your daily email, you won’t see the actual links, sorry.

• San Diego settles landslide suits for $284,000 – San Jose Mercury News
• Slip On Weak Layer – GEO-SLOPE International Ltd.
  An example analysis using SLOPE/W software.
• UK’s first commercial scale geothermal power plant set to start construction in October – Ground Engineering (GE) Magazine
• Some reflections on the Eyjafjallajoekull ash cloud – Dave’s Landslide Blog
  As usual, Dr. Dave has some great insights into this geologic hazard that is currently dominating the news.
• Port of Miami tunnel project on track for June start – MiamiHerald.com via ASCE SmartBrief
• Louisiana receives $81.5 million in new federal aid for repair of roads and bridges damaged by Hurricane Katrina – NOLA.com
• New imagery from the Qinghai earthquake | Google Earth Blog
• Geogrids remedy poor site soils at World Cup stadium in South Africa – Geosynthetics Magazine
• Geo-Engineering Reconnaissance of the February 27, 2010 Maule, Chile Earthquake, Version 1: April 15, 2010 – Geoengineer.org Press Center
  The GEER is an NSF-funded group that was created to collect perishable data in the wake of extreme events (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, or floods) in the interests of learning from the events to advance the state of geoengineering practice. This report on the earthquake was produced by over 40 lead authors and contributing authors from universities and consulting companies around the world.
• A Decade of Safety Success, March/April 2010 Public Roads

…And 13 more! […]

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying watching the 2010 Olympic Winter games over the past few days. If you have, you know that Whistler is the venue for many of the sports including alpine skiing, luge, skeleton, bobsled, ski jumping, biathlon and cross-country skiing among others. The Whistler area is located about 50-miles or so North of Vancouver. In order to get to Whistler, you need to drive along Highway 99, better known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway.  This highway has a long history of geotechnical problems, including some significant structurally controlled rockslides and landslides.  In the years leading up to these Olympic Games a fair amount of work was done on the highway with some significant geotechnical innovations.

[…]

The City of North Haven is located on an island off the coast of Maine. This town was faced with a unique challenge when a bridge needed replacing. Looking for an economical option, designers decided on a Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil – Integrated Bridge System (GRS-IBS). This solution allowed the town and DOT to re-use an existing bridge pier, beat the construction deadlines, and provide a modern bridge solution for this small town.

[Editor] Read on for more on this fascinating project in a contributed article by Lindsey Manthei O’Connor of Redi-Rock! [/Editor]

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