As already announced, the Special Lecture during the ALERT Workshop 2012 will be presented by Carlos Santamarina. The title of the lecture will be GEOPHYSICAL CHARACTERIZATION.

Abstract:
The behavior of granular materials, such as soils and fractured rocks, is determined by their discrete nature. Analogous to all other particulate materials, their properties depend on environmental parameters, such as confinement and fluid characteristics; furthermore, interparticle forces govern mechanical properties, interconnected porosity defines flow and affects diffusion characteristics, and multiphase conditions give rise to a wealth of coupled phenomena. Small-strain, electromagnetic and thermal measurements provide complementary soil and fractured rock information. Geophysical methods combine the science of granular materials, the physics of waves and thermal phenomena, signal processing and inverse problem solving to create exceptional tools for characterization and process monitoring in the laboratory and in the field. Engineering applications in site investigation, foundation engineering, geoenvironmental process monitoring, and energy-related tasks demonstrate the power and versatility of these geophysical tools.