The International Geosynthetics Society Technical Committee on Barrier Systems (IGS TCB) has been working to promote and distribute information on the newest developments in geosynthetics as a barrier.
The TC-B has been active in promoting sessions in conferences and soliciting and collecting papers on barrier topics of interest. This includes sessions as listed below:
- GeoMEast, Egypt, July 2017
- 19ICSMGE, Seoul, September 2017
- GeoAfrica, Morocco, October 2017
The TC-B is actively holding membership meetings at as many locations in various regions as time and venues allow.
The last membership meetings were held at:
- EuroGeo in Ljubljana, Slovenia on September 27, 2016.
- GeoAsia in Delhi, India, 8 – 11 November 2016
- GeoAfrica, Morocco, 16 October 2017
During these membership meetings the board informs in the open meetings the members and visitors about the latest developments in the TC-B, which are summarized:
- The TCB finalized the text for a leaflet on Barrier systems. The final version accomplished by IGS is now online available or on request, and has been translated into French, Mandarin, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish. Please contact IGS for copies to be distributed within chapters or at conferences or if you would like the leaflet to be available in another language.
- New leaflets are being prepared (members volunteered to draft a version so that the editorial board can take these to the final version) and will cover:
- A Barrier lecture
- Barriers in agriculture Applications
- Barriers in landfills
- Barriers for dams, reservoirs and canals
- Barriers in wastewater applications (here a volunteer is needed, please contact us if you are interested)
- Mining Applications with barriers
- A major effort of the TC-B is the planning of a 2018 TC-B seminar/workshop. It is hoped that this event will occur in Munich on 06/07 June 2018 in conjunction with a similar event of TC-Reinforcement on 04/05 June 2018. Planning is ongoing and keynote speakers are likely to be Malek Bouazza, George Koerner and Richard Brachman.
![]() |
- The hot topics are still being selected and ideas are always welcomed. Please contact Kent von Maubeuge directly under: kvm@naue.com.
- The lack of literature and standard protocols for Construction/Installation Quality Assurance and Quality Control was discussed and literature de-velopment was requested. This area (CQA/CQC) is recognized to have minimal liter-ature and documentation available, as con-trasted with ISO/CEN/ASTM literature. The TC-B will have a deeper look into this and see if it is possible to improve the situation. Any available information can be sent directly to Boyd Ramsey under: boydramsey@me.com.
- During the 11ICG in Seoul, Korea (16 – 21 Sept, 2018) the TC-B will be hosting a Barrier Work-shop and will continue to discuss the hot topics arising from the Munich TC-B workshop to allow continuing discussions. Additionally there will be a membership meeting during this four year IGS event.
For further information please contact the board:
Kent von Maubeuge – TC-B Chairman (kvmaubeuge@naue.com)
Nathalie Touze-Foltz – TC-B Vice-Chair (nathalie.touze@irstea.fr)
Boyd Ramsey – TC-B Vice-Chair (boydramsey@me.com)
Takeshi Katsumi – TC-B Secretary (katsumi.takeshi.6v@kyoto-u.ac.jp)
Reported by
Kent von Maubeuge, TC-B Chairman