The Alliance of Laboratories in Europe for Education, Research and Technology (ALERT) “Geomaterials” has been created in 1989 by Roberto Nova, Manuel Pastor, Ian Smith, Peter Vermeer, Olek Zienkiewicz and Félix Darve as a pioneering (at that time!) effort to develop a European School of Thinking in the field of the Mechanics of Geomaterials. The generic name “Geomaterials” is viewed as gathering together materials, whose mechanical behaviour depends on the pressure level, which can be dilatant under shearing and which are multiphase because of their porous structure. So, the “geomaterials” label brings together mainly soils, rocks and concrete. It has been obvious from the very beginning that there is a crucial need for a joint Graduate School in order to build firmly this European scientific group in the Mechanics of Geomaterials, in close link with the doctoral students.

The main areas of interest are
– micromechanics and constitutive modelling for geomaterials
– engineering,failure, strain localisation and instabilities
– large scale computations for geomaterials and geostructures
– integrity of geostructures and inverse analysis in geomechanics
– environmental geomechanics and durability of geomaterials

The core activity represents the annual meeting with ALERT Workshop and ALERT Doctoral school.

The ALERT Geomaterials network is managed by the ALERT Bureau and controlled by the Board of Directors elected from the representatives of the member institutions.

ALERT Geomaterials is a non-profit association under the terms of the French association law “Loi 1901” since the year 2006. The association is officially hosted and partly supported financially by the Grenoble Institute of Technology.