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Discussion |
1 University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
The authors have rightly drawn attention to the current status of Engineering Geology. The history of the last 50 years explains the problem. The rapid expansion of interest and activity in the field during the 60s, 70s and 80s, as witnessed by the very successful series of Annual Regional Meetings, coincided with increased Engineering activities, especially the Motorway Construction programme which introduced Engineers to problem materials such as Mercia Mudstone (or Keuper Marl as it was then known) and to relict solifluxion slides and thus made the Engineering fraternity aware of the shortcomings of their geological knowledge. Likewise, overseas activities brought Engineers into regions where their scant undergraduate geology courses provided no guidance to the geomorphological and ground problems they encountered.
Much of the Soil Mechanics applied in this era was of the classical (‘Terzaghian’) variety which was not only readily understood by geologists but, as eminent practitioners like Alec Skempton showed, could readily accommodate geological information. However, the era also saw the gradual development of Critical State Soil Mechanics and numerical methods, such as the finite element technique, to enable sophisticated mechanical models to be applied in practice. These developments usually came from sources where the geological education of undergraduates was purely cursory and hence, although in theory the new techniques are very capable of absorbing geological information, to the new breed of Engineer, geological information was not high on the list of priorities. The development of in-situ instrumentation, enabling parametric feedback from the ground profile has for many of these engineers supplanted the need for geological details and the fact that the ground response may represent an average of many geological components is ignored.
The importance of Geology to Engineering, emphasized by Terzaghi and recorded by the North American pioneers in the 1950 Volume of the Geological Society of America, commemorating the work of C. P. Berkey, has been justified time and again but the field has been diversified. The rise of Rock Mechanics in the 60s, the increasing development of Hydrogeology as a separate discipline and, in the last two decades, the rise of Environmental Geology & Geotechnics, together with the abundance of conferences and publications devoted to these fields have raised the question of just what is Engineering Geology – is it what's left or does it cover all of these things as well as its traditional core?
Griffiths and Culshaw rightly emphasize the need for a research base if the subject is to be identifiable and to progress. The lack of interest shown by the Research Councils has come at a time when Universities are ruled by financial priorities: no research funding implies that the academic is not worth employing. It is hardly surprising that at the current time, very few UK Universities have staff, let alone sections, devoted to Engineering Geology. However, this is not to say that valuable information for this field is not being obtained. If we remember that Engineering Geology represents the application of Geoscience to Engineering, then research in the Geosciences is providing useable information: it is the Engineering Geologist who will recognise that use whereas the pure Geoscientist who carried out the research is unlikely to be aware of its engineering potential.
Griffiths and Culshaw provide a list of many worthy things to be undertaken for Engineering Geological purposes. The problem is that the Research Councils will see them as just that: worthy things but not sufficiently fundamental to merit funding. The answer must be that Engineering Geologists have got to become members of research teams which include geologically aware Engineers and pure Geoscientists working on problems which address problems of fundamental significance to either Engineering or Geoscience (or both). Any good well funded research project should be capable of having at least several outcomes, these will include the attack on the fundamental problem which attracted the provision of funding and the application of this knowledge which is where the Engineering Geology lies.
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