Design and Construction in Karstic Terrains: an Engineering Challenge
Keynote Address by Dr. Paul Marinos
Dr. Paul Marinos is a full-professor and former Director of the Geotechnical Division of the Civil Engineering Department at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. He is the past-president of the International Association of Engineering Geology and the Environment, and was awarded the Hans Cloos medal this year by that organization. Dr. Marinos will open the conference with the keynote address: Design and Construction in Karstic Terrains—an Engineering Challenge.
The photo above shows one of the many engineering projects in karst areas on which Dr. Marinos has consulted. The structure in the background is designed to separate the freshwater discharge of a karstic spring from the saltwater into which it discharges so that the valuable potable water resources can be saved. In approximately the past thirty years Dr. Marinos has consulted on sixty-one dams, fifty-two tunnels, thirty-two road cuts, nineteen bridges or foundations, thirty-two environmental projects, and one hundred and twenty-one projects involving groundwater. Many of these have been in karst terrain.
Dr. Marinos also has a distinguished academic career. In addition to his duties at the National Technical University where he teaches and supervises thesis research, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Grenoble, France, the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Switzerland, and several Greek universities. He has served on the Committee of the Advanced Courses in Geology at the University of Durham, U.K., and has been a visiting Research Fellow at the University of Kobe, Japan.
Dr. Marinos’ current research interests are:
In 1997 Dr. Marinos was invited to lecture at the Conference of the South African Institute of Engineering Geology, on Engineering Geology and the Environment. That same year he was also invited to lecture at the XXVII Congress of the International Association of Hydrology held in Wottengham, U.K., on the Rise of Groundwater Due to Shallow Tunnels. In 1999 he was invited to speak at the IAEG meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal; his lecture was titled From the Geological to the Rock Mass Model. At GeoEngineering 2000 in Melbourne he spoke on Shear Strength of Rock Masses and Discontinuities. Dr. Marinos is obviously in demand as a speaker all over the world and we are privileged to have his participation in this conference. Following the banquet on Tuesday evening, he will also give a less formal presentation on Practicing Karst Hydrogeology in Ancient Greek and Roman Times.