Thirty-Sixth Annual Meeting – Vancouver 2010
The International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association held its thirty-sixth meeting in Vancouver, Canada, from 14 to 20 May, in conjunction with the World Tunnel Congress 2010 "Tunnel Vision Towards 2020" organised by ITA and the Tunneling Association of Canada.
950 persons participated to the Congress.
48 of the 58 Member Nations participated or were represented in the General Assembly, including 4 proxy and 2 votes by correspondence.
MEMBER NATIONS PRESENT OR REPRESENTED
South Africa, Germany, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia, Republic of Korea, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, Spain, United States of America, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lao, Malaysia, Mexico, Montenegro, Norway, The Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, United Kingdom, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Thailand, Turkey.
MEMBER NATIONS NOT PRESENT
Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Israel, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Morocco, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam.
EXECUTIVE COUNCIL
The ITA General Assembly has elected a new council. The President of ITA for the period 2010-2013 is Prof. In-Mo LEE from Korea.
Members:
| I.-M. Lee | Korea |
| M. Knights | United Kingdom |
| M. Thewes | Germany |
| Y. Bai | China |
| S. Eskesen | Denmark |
| I. Hrdina | Czech Republic |
| A. Elioff | USA |
| P. Kocsonya | Hungary |
| R. P. Lovat | Canada |
| C. N. Ow | Singapore |
| D. Peila | Italy |
| F. Vuilleumier | Switzerland |
| F. Amberg | Switzerland |
| C. Bérenguier | France |
Experts:
| S. Calinescu | Romania |
| P. Sarkka | Finland |
| S. Suwansawat | Thailand |
Postal Adresses and e-mail of Council members and experts are available here
MEMBERSHIP
The Association has registered the membership of three new Member Nations, Argentina, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro, and 40 new Affiliate Members (30 Corporate Members and 10 Individual Members); the total results to 58 Member Nations and 306 Affiliate Members (180 Corporate Members and 126 Individual Members) taking into account some resignations.
ITACET FOUNDATION
The ITACET Foundation was officially created on September 25, 2009.
Main objective is to encourage the Education and the Professional Training of specialists in Underground Space Use for the benefit of the emerging countries.
Main Founders : Abdullah Al-Mogbel (Saudi Arabia), CUC (Switzerland), Dar El-Handasah (Egypt), Geodata (Italy), Herrenknecht (Germany), ITA.
ITACET Foundation is to be developed into a Centre of Excellence for Education and Training on Tunnelling and Underground Space Use.
More about the foundation on their website: www.itacet.org
SUMMARY OF REPORT OF ACTIVITY OF ITA – April 2009 to March 2010
Executive council
The Executive Council held 4 plenary meetings and carried out its traditional activities in taking into account the conclusions the conclusions of the Auditor’s report, notably to increase the number of Member Nations and to take care of the relationship with the new Member Nations. He prepared the modifications of the Statutes and By-laws that will be proposed to the General Assembly in 2011, the organisation of the working groups and the strategy.
Relation with the member nations and development of the contacts
The Executive Council pursued the development of its relations with the Member Nations in visiting, participating and granting meetings or events organised by 25 Member Nations. It presented ITA at various congresses and meetings in several countries not ITA members yet. The contacts with the International Sister Associations PIARC, ISRM, ISSMGE, IRF, FEHRL, and ACUUS were pursued.
Development of the prime sponsors and supporters
Actions with the Prime Sponsors and the Supporters were undertaken with the preparation of seminars on topics and in countries regarded as strategic for their activities.
Relations with the UN, the World Bank and the European union
H. Parker, ITA Past president participated to the organisation of the conference “Sustainable Urbanisation at Information Era” at headquarter of the United Nations, ECOSOC.
It has been organised jointly by GAID and UN-Habitat with the American Institute of Architects, the Regional Town Planning Association and several societies or associations including ITA.
The relations with the European Union have been reactivated through the research project TUNCONSTRUCT and the participation of ITA to the new “Task Force Infrastructure” of ECTP. ITA, through ITA COSUF, is in close contact with the Management of Transport of the European Commission.
New contacts have been taken with the World Bank.
PUBLICATIONS AND COMMUNICATION
Tribune:
In 2010, the annual issue with focus on Canada including the reports of 31 Member Nations, reports of İTA Prime sponsors and supporters has been published in May and sent to members as well as distributed to the participants to the WTC 2010 in Vancouver.
ita@news:
33 issues of the ita@news have already been published and distributed to about 8’000 subscribers. ITA would like very much to have feedback of regular readers.
Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology (TUST):
ITA Members have access an electronic version of TUST (including archives).
Website:
The number of distinct visitors is around 5 800 from 130 countries per month. The average time of a visit is 10 minutes. The secretariat has created a private area reserved to the members, accessible with identification and password.
ITA – Reports:
3 reports have been published : “Environmental and Sustainable Development Reasons” prepared by WG15, “Long Tunnels at Great Depth” prepared by WG 17 and “Sprayed Concrete – summary of the state-of-the-art” prepared by WG 12.
Press:
In 2009-2010, ITA has participated directly or indirectly to articles published in technical newspapers or magazines of information such as Capital (Spain), World Tunnelling (UK), Tunnelling Journal (UK), Travaux (F), Rail Transit (China).
Other business:
ITA has created a group in the social network LinkedIn. There are already more than 200 members in this group.
ITA OPEN SESSION ON GROUND REFERENCE INFORMATION FOR BIDDING TUNNEL PROJECTS – CURRENT PRACTICE, SHORTCOMINGS/BENEFITS AND FUTURE CHALLENGES
The Open Session prepared by Markus Thewes and Soren Eskesen was chaired by Martin Knights, ITA President.
During the Open Session, presentations were made by:
- Markus Thewes, ITA ExCo, on "Requirements Concerning Geotechnical Investigation for the Minimization of Risks in Shield Tunnelling"
- Joe Gildner on “Client View”
- Arnold Dix on “Bringing Certainty to the Unknown” The Role of law in the Apportionment of Underground Construction Risks”
- Michael Rehbock/Sander on “Risk Sharing : Planners / Clients View”
- Marco Giorelli on “Ground Reference Requirements for EPBs/Experiences”
- Ulrich Wadepohl on “International Experience Contractors View"
- Jeff Petersen on “Experiences/Contractors View”
- The WG 12, 15 and 17 presented their works
TRAINING COURSE “GENERAL TUNNELLING”
A 2-day course has been organised by the ITACET foundation and TAC. There were 21 lecturers on “General aspects for Tunnelling” (17 teaching hours) and 195 participants from 32 countries including 85 from Canada, 45 from USA.
NEXT ANNUAL MEETINGS
- Helsinki, Finland, from 21 to 26 May, 2011, during the ITA-AITES WTC 2011 "Underground spaces in the service of a sustainable society".
- Bangkok, Thailand, from 18 to 23 May, 2012, during the ITA-AITES WTC 2012 “Tunnelling and Underground Space for a global Society”.
- Geneva, Switzerland, from 10 to 17 May 2013, during the ITA-AITES WTC 2013 “Underground – the way to the future”.