Sustainability, Energy,
Mining & Transportation

Major Topics for 2024

Sustainability
  • Reducing the carbon footprint (or decarbonizing) construction and engineering
  • Life cycle assessment approaches to applications with geosynthetics
  • Sustainability ethics in engineering
  • Resilient infrastructure systems
  • Geosynthetics and the UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • The influence of sustainability on waste management design
  • Water resource protection – containment, conveyance, irrigation security, floating covers, waterfront protection
  • Bioinspired engineering design
Energy
  • Opportunities and challenges in energy transition for geotechnical engineering
  • Wind Energy – On-shore, off-shore, site design strategies and best practices, erosion control, scour protection, long-term maintenance, economics of wind farm construction and performance
  • Solar Energy – Solar collection with geotechnical systems (e.g., landfill capping, floating covers)
  • Energy Geotechnics – Geothermal heat exchangers, high-temperature containment ponds and waste cells, subsurface geothermal collection and storage
  • Landfill Gas (LFG) – Collection, management, performance evaluation with temporary and final cover systems
Mining
  • Tailings – Dams, Pits, Design, Management, Remediation
  • Heap Leach – Evolving practice & scale, environmental performance, best practices, containment designs and mine ROI, high-altitude heap leach design and safety
  • Mine Safety & Infrastructure – Slope stability, longwall mining, road integrity, crusher walls
  • Failure & Reclamation – Causes of and response to failures, abandoned mines, reclamation strategies and examples
  • Water – Site water management, evaporation control, dewatering designs and performance
Transportation Infrastructure
  • Roadway, railway, and airfield applications and design
  • Track foundations and embankments – Stability and performance, maintenance, rehabilitation vs. rebuild
  • Bridges & Embankments
  • Pavement testing and performance evaluations: highway and airfield
  • Technical transfer between military and civilian engineering
  • Tunneling
  • Intermodal and container storage yard design
  • Improving shipping and navigation – Dredging, dredge spoils management, evolving ports

Additional Topics of Interest

Design, Applications & Case Studies
  • Agriculture, Aquaculture, and Land Use for Food Production
  • Coastal Engineering & Resilience
  • Dam Engineering
  • Erosion & Sediment Control
  • Geohazard / Disaster Mitigation & Response
  • Geosynthetics Properties & Testing
  • Landfills and changing waste management practices
  • MSE Walls
  • Slope Stabilization
  • Soil-Geosynthetic Interaction
  • Water Resources
Hot Topics in the Americas
  • Durability and Long-Term Performance
  • Engineering in different environments: arid zones, cold regions, high heat, humid, mountainous, tropical
  • Failures & Remediation
  • Geotechnical and civil software advances
  • Standardization of Geosynthetics – NOTE: GeoAmericas 2024 will celebrate the 40th anniversary of ASTM International Committee D35 on Geosynthetics’ work. The impact of standardization on practice is welcomed throughout the conference.