History and Background

Geo-disasters, such as soil liquefactions, rockfalls, landslides and floodings are more likely to occur under the impact of climate change in the future decades, posing significant threats to human life and infrastructure. While predicting and preventing these disasters from occurring are practically impossible, assessment of their impacts and preparing for worst-case scenarios are essentially feasible to minimize the losses. One approach is to develop novel computational methods that are capable of assessing the subsequent large-deformation and multi-field coupling responses of geomaterials and geo-structures. In recent years, different types of numerical methods, e.g. CFD, SPH, CEL, MPM, PFEM, LDFE and CFD-DEM, were proposed to tackle the large deformation and coupling problems. The CFD and SPH provide solvers of hydrodynamic characteristics of fluid; the LDFE avoids excessive mesh distortion by periodically remeshing and interpolating field variables; the MPM and CEL take advantage of both the Eulerian and Lagrangian methods; and the DEM considers interaction between the soil grains at the meso/micro scale. Applications of these novel numerical approaches to investigate the geo-disaster effects have been frequently reported. However, theories of the numerical methods remain to be developed before they can be adopted to solve more complicated geohazard problems; user-friendly software needs to be coded before numerical models can be efficiently constructed. Therefore, we see that there is an urgency to build a global communicating platform to jointly develop novel numerical methods for geo-disaster assessment by harnessing the collective knowledge, which will be ruled under the framework of the International Consortium on Geo-disaster Reduction.

 

Aims and Perspectives

The committee’s purpose is to foster international co-operation in development of novel and efficient numerical methods for geo-disaster assessment. The main objectives of the committee are to enhance the theory and algorithm of the numerical methods, to improve their accuracy and efficiency and to develop user-friendly software. The main tasks of the committee are to exchange technical information and to promote collaboration between research, development, engineering and regulatory organisations; to review operating experience and the state of knowledge on selected topics of geo-hazard modelling and mitigation techniques; to disseminates widely the advances of the development of numerical methods and the examples of their applications; to initiate and conduct programmes to train beginners of numerical simulations and the new numerical methods.

 

Chair:

Youkou Dong, Dr. Prof., College of Marine Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences, China

 

Advisory Board:

Siming He, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Dong Wang, Ocean University of China

Yu Huang, Tongji University

Michel Jaboyedoff, University of Lausanne

Jurgen Grabe, Hamburg University of Technology

Kenich Soga, The University of California, Berkeley

 

Secretaries:

Fubin Tu, China University of Geosciences

Wenjie Du, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

 

Committee Members:

Chun Liu, Nanjing University

Wenjie Xu, Tsinghua University

Jingbin Zheng, Fugro GeoConsulting Inc.

Pan Hu, Western Sydney University

Wangcheng Zhang, Durham University

Francesca Ceccato, University of Padua

Gang Qiu, Mingyang Smart Energy Group, Hamburg

Gongdan Zhou, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Chaojun Ouyang, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Xiaoqin Lei, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Wenjie Du, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Lan Cui, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Yanhao Zheng, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen

Xue Zhang, Liverpool University

Dianlei Feng, Tongji University

Xinyue Li, Tongji University

Mingliang Zhou, Tongji University

Zili Dai, Shanghai University

Enjin Zhao, China University of Geosciences

Fubin Tu, China University of Geosciences