Summary analysis of papers submitted for Theme 1: Rock engineering, environmental safety and control

The 106 papers that were received for Theme 1 of the IXth Congress of the ISRM were analysed with regard to content, nature of the papers, methods of analysis and observation methods used by the authors. The general standard of the papers was very high, making the selection process for oral presentation very difficult. It was seen that numerical modeling was the most popular method of analysis and direct measurement the most popular method of observation. A disturbingly high proportion of authors did not describe any observations - this may have been due to restrictions on the space allocated per paper. A trend that appears to be emerging is the combination of rock mechanics with fluid dynamics. More work is required on the effects of time on rock stability. (author)