All the traces of historic heritage are a fundamental part of our environment and reward us in the form of cultural enrichment, with the ability to have a positive effect both on our lifestyle and economy. Therefore, the preservation of ancient monuments, historic towns and sites has increasingly drawn the attention of public opinion, governmental agencies as well as consultants and contractors. This interest must be however carefully controlled and directed, since the conservation of monuments and historic sites is one of the most challenging problems of our age. Careless attempts at preservation can be detrimental not only to their iconic value (formal integrity), but even to their structural characteristics and the materials they are built with (material integrity).
Geotechnical Engineering for the Preservation of Monuments and Historic Sites collects one opening address, four special lectures and 82 contributions from all over the world, giving a unique sample of the geotechnical problems to be tackled, the solutions currently being proposed, and the strategies being carried out to preserve the overall integrity of monuments and historic sites. It is clearly apparent that differences exist around the world not only in terms of the characteristics of the monuments or sites to be preserved, but also in the approaches adopted to achieve this aim. Hence, no unique solution is available to the geotechnical engineer dealing with the delicate structures and sites that represent our cultural heritage, and knowledge of previous experiences may be a unique guide in any technical decision-making process.
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. 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.
