Physical modelling and testing in environmental geotechnics

The preservation of natural environment has become a major concern, which affects nowadays a wide range of professionals from local communities administrators to natural resources managers (water, wildlife, flora, etc) and, in the end, to the consumers that we all are. Although totally ignored some fifty years ago, environmental geotechnics has become an emergent area of study and research which borders on the traditional domains, with which the geo-technicians are confronted (soil and rock mechanics, engineering geology, natural and anthropogenic risk management). Dedicated to experimental approaches (in-situ investigations and tests, laboratory tests, small-scale model testing), the Symposium fits in with the geotechnical domains of environment and transport of soil pollutants. These proceedings report some progress of developments in measurement techniques and studies of transport of pollutants in saturated and unsaturated soils in order to improve our understanding of such phenomena within multiphase environments. Experimental investigations on decontamination and isolation methods for polluted soils are discussed. The intention is to assess the impact of in-situ and laboratory tests, as well as small-scale model testing, on engineering practice. One paper is analysed in INIS data base for its specific interest in nuclear industry. The other ones, concerning the energy, are analyzed in ETDE data base