Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground

Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground comprises a collection of 68 contributions, including 55 technical papers, 6 General Reports, 5 Keynotes, 1 Fujita Lecture, and 1 Bright Spark Lecture presented at the 11th International Symposium on Geotechnical Aspects of Underground Construction in Soft Ground (IS-Macau 2024), held in Macao SAR, China, on June 14-17, 2024.

The symposium is the latest in a series that began in New Delhi in 1994 and was followed by symposia in London (1996), Tokyo (1999), Toulouse (2002), Amsterdam (2005), Shanghai (2008), Rome (2011), Seoul (2014), Sao Paulo (2017), and Cambridge (2022). This symposium was organized by the University of Macau, Civil Engineering Laboratory of Macau, and the Macau Association for Geotechnical Engineering under the auspices of TC204 of ISSMGE. The book includes contributions from more than 15 countries on the research, design, and construction of underground works in soft ground. The theme of IS-Macau 2024 is “Tunnelling and Underground Construction for Smart Cities”. The contributions cover the following topics:

• Basic properties and soil improvement in soft ground
• Constitutive and Numerical Modelling
• Innovative analysis and design in tunneling and underground construction
• Smart monitoring and visualization technologies for tunneling and underground construction
• Sustainability and resilience of underground infrastructure
• Field case studies

Similar to previous editions, GEOTECHNICAL ASPECTS OF UNDERGROUND CONSTRUCTION IN SOFT GROUND serves as an invaluable resource offering insights into the contemporary methods of analyzing, designing, and executing tunnels and deep excavations within soft ground environments, crucial for the advancement of smart cities. The book is particularly aimed at academics and professionals interested in geotechnical and underground engineering.

Professor Wan-Huan Zhou currently serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Macau and the Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is a core member of the State Key Laboratory of Internet of Things for Smart City, the Vice Director of the Macau Association for Geotechnical Engineering, and a board member in several international geotechnical organizations and societies. Her research mainly focuses on intelligent deformation analysis and monitoring in geotechnical engineering, multiscale modeling of geotechnical materials, and advanced laboratory and field testing. She currently serves as the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Geomechanics and as an editorial board member for several international geotechnical engineering journals such as Biogeotechnics, Transportation Geotechnics, and Canadian Geotechnical Journal. Prof. Zhou has published over 100 papers in top international journals and conferences. She has led more than 10 research projects, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, and the Science and Technology Development Fund (FDCT) of Macau SAR. In 2022 and 2023, she was in the World’s Top 2% Scientist-Stanford University Releases List (Career) of the Civil Engineering discipline.

Dr. Zheng Guan is a research assistant professor at the University of Macau and a Registered Geotechnical and Structural Engineer in China, with over 5 years of engineering experience in geotechnical site characterization, geotechnical design, and geological hazard mitigation. He obtained his Ph.D. at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) in 2021, receiving the award for Best PhD Thesis in Geotechnical Studies 2021 from the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). His research interests focus on combining techniques in dimensionality reduction/transforms, sparse sensing, and machine learning for underground digitalization and reliability- and performance-based design in geotechnical engineering. He has published more than 19 papers in top international journals.

Dr. Xue Li is a postdoc fellow at the University of Macau. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Sun Yat-sen University in 2022. His research interests focus on mechanical behavior of marine coral sand and soft soil, and the application of machine learning in geotechnical engineering.