First CEN TC 189 meetings chaired by Daniele Cazzuffi

​From 23 to 25 May 2012 the annual meetings of the European Committee for Standardization on Geosynthetics (CEN TC 189) took place at UNI in Milano: the meetings were for the first time chaired by Daniele Cazzuffi (CESI SpA, Milano), who was unanimously elected President of the Committee in January 2012, for a period of three years 2012-2014.
The annual meetings in Milano were attended by more than one hundred experts coming from twelve different European countries and from United States.
The European Committee on Geosynthetics was founded in 1989 and it’s organised in six Working Groups, especially devoted to the development of methods for mechanical, hydraulical and durability tests and mainly to elaborate the harmonised European standards for the various field of geosynthetics applications (landfills, contaminated sites, dams and reservoirs, canals and waterways, tunnels and underground structures, road and railways infrastructures, landslide stabilisation, drainage systems, erosion control): these harmonised European standards shall be accepted as national standards in all countries belonging to CEN.
The meetings in Milano represented a very good opportunity to update the international state-of-the-art of geosynthetic engineering, with special emphasis on the environmental advantages of the use of these materials and these technologies, also for the construction of safer containment and retaining structures in seismic areas .
The next European meetings with Dr. Cazzuffi as CEN TC 189 Chairman will be at AFNOR in Paris from 14 to16 May 2013.