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Do not expect to get a visa to the UAE at the Abu Dhabi airport with a Canadian passport, as stated can be done on the internet! Thank heavens I also carried a UK passport, so I was not sent home and was able to attend the 4th Geosynthetics Middle East conference after all. This event continues to grow in attendance and impact. Delegates from Australia, USA, Romania, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere joined many attendees from the UAE and MENA region. In fact, the event had roughly 70 registrants just from the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City.
Irina Bender (SKZ, Germany) and conference chairman Reda Ashkar (BMC-Gulf, Dubai) put on an excellent conference with the support of the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City.
The keynote lecture was given by H.E. Eng. Abdulla Saeed Al Shamsi, the Executive Director of Infrastructure and Municipal Assets for the city. He focused on “Sustainable Development of Infrastructure Projects Using Geosynthetics.” Other papers included geosynthetics in roads, tunnels (roads and sewers), irrigation ponds, railroads, walls/slopes, corrugated pipes, and river/marine engineering, but one of the most interesting papers was on “Constraints and Barriers to the Application of Geosynthetics,” which was presented by Jamil Raja of Loughborough University, UK.
Rather than the somewhat negative connotation implied by the title, Raja’s paper reported on research sponsored by the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) United Kingdom chapter. There, Neil Dixon and others have focused on the sustainability of geosynthetics, their perception by the engineering community, and where/how they need to be promoted for improved acceptance.
A topic of informal discussion was the potential for a specification for a high performance/high durability high-density polyethylene (HDPE) geomembrane. Valuable input was offered by attendees from Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, USA, and Germany. The information exchanged in this discussion would complement the GRI.GM13 commodity specification.
The gala dinner, complete with belly-dancer, was sponsored by Mattex…and was followed by a busload of crazy guys, who departed for the Metallica concert.
Regardless of whether your geo travel includes actual rock concerts, the Geosynthetics Middle East conference series, held annually, deserves to be placed on your “would like to attend” calendar.
PICTURES FROM GEOSYNTHETICS MIDDLE EAST
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Ian D. Peggs, Ph.D., P.E., P.Eng, is the president of I-CORP INTERNATIONAL Inc., www.geosynthetic.com.
