Meetings/Workshops

Action TU1208

Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar

COST Success Story

May 10, 2016 - This page is being updated

The Second General Meeting of the COST Action TU1208 “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar” is going to be held in Vienna, one of the most beautiful and enchanting cities in the world, from 30 April to 2 May 2014. The meeting is organised jointly with the 2014 European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU GA), the venue is the Austria Center Vienna.

This special event will close the first year of the Action's activities and overall it will include: the GI3.1 Session of the 2014 EGU GA, the Action’s Management Committee (MC) Meeting, and the Meetings of the four Working Groups (WGs) composing the general pattern of the scientific programme of the Action. Here you can download the programme of the Second General Meeting.

Several new and interesting scientific results will be presented and discussed, obtained by the Action’s Members during the last twelve months. The main focus will be on innovative GPR technologies and methodologies, advanced inspection strategies and practices, accurate electromagnetic methods for the modelling of GPR scenarios, inversion and imaging techniques, and data-processing algorithms. Although the COST Action TU1208 is principally focused on the use of GPR in civil engineering tasks, we are cooperating with experts employing GPR in different fields of application, and we are working on the integration of GPR with other Non-Destructive Testing techniques. During the meeting, we will also discuss how to carry on the Action’s activities during the next months. The event includes almost 100 presentations: you are invited to discover how rich and interesting the programme is browsing through its pages.

The joint organisation of the Second General Meeting with the 2014 EGU GA hasn’t been easy, but our efforts will certainly be rewarded. The EGU GA will bring together about 12.000 scientists from all over the world, studying all the Earth disciplines, planetary and space sciences. Being open to such a wide scientific community, the Second General Meeting will create new synergies, attract new Members, give huge visibility to COST and to the Action TU1208, at the same time providing an important added value to the discussion of the Action’s ongoing projects and results.

The Members of COST Action TU1208 sincerely thank COST for funding the COST Action TU1208 and this meeting. We are grateful to the COST Office for its constant and strong support to COST Action TU1208 during the first year of the Action's lifetime and for authorising the organisation of the Second General Meeting inside the EGU GA. In particular, we would like to thank Prof. Tatiana Kovacikova, Head of Science Operations, our previous and present Science Officers, Dr. Thierry Goger and Dr. Mickael Pero, and our Administrative Officer, Ms. Carmencita Malimban. A very special thank goes from the Action's Chair to Prof. Cristina Pronello, Chair of the COST Transport and Urban Development Domain Committee, for appreciating and strongly supporting the idea of this meeting, for her help, encouragement and for all her wise suggestions. We would also like to thank Prof. Goran Mladenovic, our Domain Committee Rapporteur, for his support during this first year of the Action’s lifetime. We are grateful to Prof. Walter Schmidt, President of the EGU Division on Geosciences Instrumentation (GI), for the time and efforts that he has spent for the organisation of the GI activities within the 2014 EGU GA, for having fulfilled our request to schedule all the GI3.1 oral and poster slots on Wednesday, and for his support to the organisation of the EGU GA Splinter Meetings constituting our MC and WG Meetings. Last but not least, the Action's Chair deeply thanks all the TU1208 Members for their active and enthusiastic participation to this event, and for their continuous efforts to make our COST Action a success.

 

2014 Working Group Progress Meeting

The 2014 Working Group Progress Meeting of the COST Action TU1208 “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar” will be held at IFSTTAR, Nantes, France, on the 24th and 25th of February, 2014. Over 30 delegates from both academia and industry will actively participate to the meeting, being engaged in a series of presentations, discussions and brainstorming sessions, concerning the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) use in civil engineering tasks.

The main focus of the meeting will be on the following WG2 and WG3 topics: (i) inspection procedures for effective GPR surveying of critical transport infrastructures and buildings; (ii) inspection procedures for effective GPR sensing and mapping of underground utilities and voids in urban areas; (iii) inspection procedures for effective GPR monitoring of construction materials; (iv) determination, through the use of a GPR system, of water content in structures, foundations and soil; (v) advanced techniques for the solution of forward and inverse electromagnetic near-field scattering problems by complex scenarios; (vi) shape-reconstruction and quantitative estimation of electromagnetic and physical properties from GPR data; (vii) processing of GPR data collected during civil engineering surveys.

We will be honoured to have Prof. Antonis Giannopoulos and Dr. Craig Warren holding a special workshop on “Computational Electromagnetics with the Finite-Difference Time-Domain technique.” The programme of this workshop is to resume the Finite-Difference Time-Domain method and the potentialities of the well-known versatile and accurate GPRMAX software, as well as to talk about some advanced topics like the modelling of complex structures and of inhomogeneous media with stochastically distributed parameters, for realistic electromagnetic representations of GPR antennas, construction materials and soils.

We are delighted to announce that two keynote lectures are foreseen, by Prof. Andreas Tzanis and Dr. Janne Poikajarvi. Prof. Andreas Tzanis will present the well-known MATGPR software that he developed, providing a broad and functional range of tools for the analysis of zero and single-offset GPR data; he will also give an overview on GPR data processing, suggesting open issues and possible future developments in this area. Dr. Janne Poikajarvi will present the Mara Nord Project, recently carried out in Finland, Sweden and Norway; the project objectives were to demonstrate the potential of GPR in road-condition measurement and rehabilitation planning, to create and harmonise Scandinavian recommendations, and to organise a GPR training programme.

An interesting visit to the IFSTTAR geophysical test site, Accelerated Pavement Testing (APT) facility and geotechnical centrifuge has been organised. The geophysical test site is an open-air laboratory including a large and deep area, filled with various materials arranged in horisontal compacted slices, separated by vertical interfaces and water-tighted in surface; several objects as pipes, polystyrene hollows, boulders and masonry are embedded in the field. The APT facility is an outdoor circular carousel dedicated to full-scale pavement experiments, consisting of a central tower and four long arms equipped with wheels, running on a circular test track. The IFSTTAR test sites represent a perfect location for the comparison of different GPR equipment and surveying procedures.

The Members of COST Action TU1208 are deeply grateful to COST, for funding the COST Action TU1208, and to the Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux, for hosting the event and providing facilities.

Download the Scientific Programme and Practical Information Guide.

 

First Action's General Meeting

The First Action's General Meeting was held in "Roma Tre" University, Rome, Italy, from the 22nd to the 24th of July, 2013. About 100 participants attended this event, from 19 European Countries.

Overall, the First Action's General Meeting included the Action's Management Committee Meeting, the Steering Group Meeting, and the Meetings of the four Working Groups composing the general pattern of the scientific program of the Action.

 

During the meeting, several promising discussions and a wide exchange of knowledge and experience related to the use of GPR in civil engineering problems took place. The meeting was mainly devoted to address the state of the art, advancement, ongoing studies and open problems, in the fields of GPR technologies and methodologies, inspection strategies and practices, electromagnetic methods for the modelling of GPR scenarios, and numerical algorithms for the processing of GPR data. Although the COST Action TU1208 is mainly focused on the use of GPR in civil engineering tasks, we shared information and ideas with experts employing GPR in different fields of application, or exploiting other Non-Destructive Testing techniques in civil engineering. We discussed preliminary ideas about the definition and coordination of test scenarios, representing both typical and unusual situations that may occur in civil engineering tasks, for an effective comparison between different advanced GPR equipment, inspection procedures, electromagnetic methods and data-processing algorithms.

We were honoured to have Dr. David J. Daniels with us, giving a talk on Monday on GPR design challenges. He provided an overview of the system design issues for the various modulation techniques and suggested what improvements in subsystems - such as antennas, receivers and transmitters - are needed to increase overall GPR performance. We were honoured by the presence of Dr. Erica Utsi as well, presenting on Monday the EuroGPR activities and discussing with us ideas and proposals concerning joint initiatives between the EuroGPR Association and the COST Action TU1208. We were also delighted by the exciting plenary talk given by Prof. Antonis Giannopoulos, Chair of the Working Group 3, about the well-known GPR simulation tool GPRMAX that he has developed in his career as a researcher: he presented an overview on the progress reached by the FDTD modelling over the last 20 years, also providing some instructions on possible developments to be pursued in the next future. It was a great pleasure to have Dr. Immo Trinks, Chair of the Working Group 4, giving a very interesting plenary talk on Wednesday about large-scale archaeological prospection using GPR array systems: he presented extraordinary results collected by his research team at the Roman town of Carnuntum, Austria, that represent an excellent example of how high-resolution GPR measurements are of fundamental importance for the detection, mapping, documentation and investigation of buried cultural heritage in three dimensions. The First Call for nine Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs) funded by the COST Action TU1208 was kindly presented by Prof. Marian Marciniak, Manager of the STSMs.

For this meeting, the COST Action TU1208 published two volumes: the Proceedings of the First Action's General Meeting (Editors: L. Pajewski and A. Benedetto; Publishing House: Aracne; Rome, July 2013; 194 pp.; ISBN 978-88-548-6191-6) and the Booklet of Participants and Institutions (Editors: L. Pajewski and A. Benedetto; Publishing House: Aracne; Rome, July 2013; 127 pp.; ISBN 978-88-548-6192-3). The ISBN of the Opera Omnia including both volumes is 978-88-548-6190-9.

The Members of COST Action TU1208 deeply thank COST for funding the Action and this meeting, "Roma Tre" University for hosting the event and providing facilities, IDS Ingegneria dei Sistemi SpA for entirely covering the editorial costs to print the Proceedings and the Booklet, Agilent Technologies and Vodafone for offering the common dinner on Tuesday 23 July.

Here you can download the Programme of the First Action General Meeting, the Proceedings of the Meeting and the Booklet of Participants and Institutions.

 

 

 

Previous Meetings

  • Kick-off Meeting, 4 April 2013, COST Office, Brussels, BE.
  • First Action's General Meeting, "Roma Tre" University, Rome, Italy, 22-24 July 2013.
  • 2014 Working Group Progress Meeting, IFSTTAR (Institut Français des Sciences et Technologies des Transports, de l'Aménagement et des Réseaux), Nantes, France, 24-25 February 2014.
  • Second Action's General Meeting, in conjunction with 2014 European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU-GA), Vienna (AT), 30 April-2 May 2014.

 

Next Meetings

  • Third Action's General Meeting, University of West London, London, United Kingdom, March 4th-6th, 2015.

For information concerning the COST Action TU1208, please take contact with the Chair of the Action, Dr. Lara Pajewski - This website is supported by COST, European COoperation in Science and Technology - COST is supported by the EU RTD Framework Programme Horizon2020