Events
Hanoi Geoengineering 2010 “Urban Geoengineering, Earth Resources and Sustainability in the Context of Climate Change”
Date: November 22 - 23, 2010
Venue: Conference Hall, Vietnam National University, 19 Le Thanh Tong, Hanoi, Vietnam
Organized by:
- Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU)
- Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)
- Kyoto University (KU)
- International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC)
Number of attendants: about 300
Hanoi Geoengineering 2010 Flyer
Report 096
Outline
The International Symposium, Hanoi Geoengineering 2010, was held, which were organized by Vietnamese universities and research institutions represented by Vietnam National University, Hanoi (VNU), Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Kyoto University (KU), International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), following Hanoi Geoengineering 2005 and Hanoi Geoengineering 2007. At the past two symposiums, topics related to conventional geotechnical engineering and geo-exploration were mainly discussed. However, the main purposes of this symposium were to make discussion on topics on geotechnical problems caused by climate change, which recently has been highlighted as crucial problems to be tackled urgently all over the world.
Report
In the symposium, keynote lectures were made by Prof. Mai Trong Nhuan, President of VNU, Dr. Noppadol Phien-wej and Prof. Ohtsu And, the topics presented by each speaker were "Costal erosion in seashore in Vietnam, "Bangkok subway construction project", and "Landslide and slope failure in Thailand", respectively. All topics at keynote lecture were related to infrastructure asset management in Southeast Asian countries, which is the one of main disciplines dealt in our GCOE projects. It is noted that active discussion between speakers and participants revealed the facts that researchers and engineers in Southeast Asian countries have strong concerns on the topics.
After keynote lectures, 45 papers were presented by speakers who came from Thailand, Netherland, Norway, Japan and Korea, in addition to Vietnamese, at 5 oral sessions.
Features of both presentation and discussion made in this symposium were much more active than those in the past two symposiums. The reasons for the fact could be considered as follows: For example, "Costal erosion in seashore in Vietnam" has been caused due to deforesting of mangrove plants and its expansion of areas would be accelerated due to global warning associated with climate change. In addition, frequent of landslide and slope failure events have drastically been increasing due to both increase of torrential rainfall events, which can be regarded as one phenomenon of climate change, and disorderly infrastructure development such as residential areas, industrial areas, road construction and so on. It was ascertained that since the topics discussed actively in this symposium require interdisciplinary investigation to cope with the difficulties associated with realization of sustainable development and human security for the people who live there, which is actually fitting to the main themes of our GCOE program.
From such viewpoints, the participation in symposium such as this one and the discussion together with researchers and engineers in Southeast Asian countries would surely help us to establish disciplines on "Human Security Engineering in Asian Mega-Cites", which is our goal of our activities.
