Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites III

The conservation of monuments and historic sites is one of the most challenging problems facing modern civilization. It involves, in inextricable patterns, factors belonging to different fields (cultural, humanistic, social, technical, economical, administrative) and the requirements of safety and use appear to be (or often are) in conflict with the respect of the integrity of the monuments. The complexity of the topic is such that a shared framework of reference is still lacking among art historians, architects, structural and geotechnical engineers. The complexity of the subject is such that a shared frame of reference is still lacking among art historians, architects, architectural and geotechnical engineers. And while there are exemplary cases of an integral approach to each building element with its static and architectural function, as a material witness to the culture and construction techniques of the original historical period, there are still examples of uncritical reliance on modern technology leading to the substitution from earlier structures to new ones, preserving only the iconic look of the original monument. Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites III collects the contributions to the eponymous 3rd International ISSMGE TC301 Symposium (Naples, Italy, 22-24 June 2022). The papers cover a wide range of topics, which include:
- Principles of conservation, maintenance strategies, case histories
- The knowledge: investigations and monitoring
- Seismic risk, site effects, soil structure interaction
- Effects of urban development and tunnelling on built heritage
- Preservation of diffuse heritage: soil instability, subsidence, environmental damages
The present volume aims at geotechnical engineers and academics involved in the preservation of monuments and historic sites worldwide.

Renato Lancellotta is Emeritus Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at Politecnico di Torino. From 2014 to 2021 he is has been Chairman of the International Commettee on Preservation of Historic Sites and Monuments (TC301) and in 2012 he delivered the XI Croce Lecture.
He is editor of the Book Series on Built Heritage and Geotecnics, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis group, London and Editor in chief of Rivista Italiana di Geotecnica. Professional experience refers to geotechnical studies for the preservation of historical monuments, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Ghirlandina Tower and the Cathedral of Modena, the S.Stefano church in Bologna, the Campanile of Giotto in Florence, the Garisenda tower in Bologna.
Carlo Viggiani is Emeritus Professor at the University of Napoli Federico II where he had been teaching Foundation Engineering from 1975 to 2009.
He is Author or Co-Author of 5 books and 230 technical papers; has been Editor of the Italian Geotechnical Journal; component of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics
He has been State of the Art Reporter at the ICSMFE in New Delhi, 1994 (Mitigation of Natural Hazards: Landslides and Subsidence) and at the ICSMGE in Osaka, 2005 (Pile foundations).
He has been Chairman of TC19 (later TC301) (Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites) of the ISSMGE, and participated to the conservation of a number of monuments affected by geotechnical problem, including the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Involved in the design and construction of earth dams, civil and industrial buildings, bridges, tunnels and underground constructions, stabilisation of landslides. Consultant for Italian Railways and Underground Transportation Systems in Rome, Napoli, Torino, Bologna, Firenze. Involved in the design of the suspension bridge over the Messina Straits.
Alessandro Flora is professor of geotechnical engineering at the University of Napoli Federico II (Italy). He has been visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo (Japan) in 1993 and visiting professor at the University of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, Brazil) in 2008. He is chairman of TC301 (Preservation of Historic Sites) of ISSMGE, member of the Editorial Board of the Built Heritage and Geotechnics Books series (CRC press), Member of the editorial board of the Italian Geotechnical Journal (RIG), Italian representative in TC211 (Ground Improvement) of ISSMGE. He is co-author of a book on Jet Grouting (CRC Press), co-author of the Chapter on Foundations in the Encyclopedia of Engineering Geology (Springer), co-editor of a volume on Geotechnics and Heritage 2013 (CRC Press), co-editor of a volume on Geotechnics and Heritage: historic towers 2017 (CRC Press). He is author of more than 200 papers published on international journals and presented at international conferences, receiving some awards. He has been appointed Kerisel Lecturer in 2022, and has been invited to deliver Keynote or State of the Art Lectures at many international conferences around the world. He has been involved as geotechnical consultant in the design of many major works.
Filomena de Silva has deeply studied the effects of the dynamic soil-foundation structure interaction (SFSI) on the response of ideal structures and case-studies, through analytical tools and numerical simulations performed by following the sub-structure method and by modelling the full SFS system during her PhD under the supervision of prof. Francesco Silvestri,. She has been hosted by the Geotechnical Team of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and worked with prof. Dimitris Pitilakis who has a deep experience on experiments on SFSI. She has again collaborated with him in the 2018 EU project Seismic Impedance for Soil-structure Interaction From On-site tests, SISIFO funded by the HORIZON2020-supported program SERA (Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe). On such a topic she has been the co-supervisor of the M.Sc. thesis of Chiara Amendola, awarded with the prize on the application of geophysics to earthquake engineering, sponsored by the National Institutes OGS and CNR and dedicated to Marco Mucciarelli.
Thanks to her expertise on SFSI, she gained a fellowship at the University of Leeds to work on the effects of the soil on the seismic fragility of tunnels in the frame of the international EPSRC project Shaking Tunnel Vision, whose results were selected for the Geotechnique symposium in print 2019.
She is an organizer of the 3rd International Symposium on Geotechnical Eng. for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites (Napoli, 2022), promoted by ISSMGE-TC301.
Lucia Mele is a Research Fellow at University of Napoli Federico II, Italy. In 2017 she started a PhD course in the framework of the European Project LIQUEFACT, focusing the attention on improving the basic understanding of liquefaction behaviour of sandy soils and studying several techniques to mitigate liquefaction risk. She mainly worked in laboratory, performing monotonic and cyclic (triaxial and simple shear) tests. She spent two months in Tokyo University (Japan), where she studied in depth the effect of non-saturation on liquefaction resistance. She took part to several conferences presenting the results of her research to scientific community.