AJCE, Vol. 34, No. 1 Special Issue, 2016 Foreword, i/ii
FOREWORD
Welcome to this Special Issue of Academic Journal of Civil Engineering related to the conference organized each year by AUGC (The University - Association of Civil Engineering). The 34th meeting of universities in civil engineering has been organised by AUGC and the department ArGEnCo (Architecture, Geology, Environment and Construction) of the University of Liège were held in Liège (Belgium) from 25 to 27 May 2016 under the general theme: Building the city of the future.
This is the second time that the RUGC hold outside France after the conference organized in Tlemcen (Algeria) in May 2012.
The conference attracted 200 people from several French speaking countries (France, Belgium, Algeria, ...) representing a wide range of academics, scientists, researchers, students, designers, policy makers and other industrialists from a wide variety of backgrounds, including fields of engineering, materials, sustainable, architecture, and ecological technologies, biomaterials, materials sciences, environmental engineering and government agencies, end-users, etc. Ten of the best contribution were selected and are presented in this special issue which benefits of regular peer reviewing.
The SI-AJCE-RUGC2016 proceedings titled "Building the city of the future" include the lectures and papers presented at the conference. It consists of 165 full texts of papers, including 3 keynotes related to some hot topics in the construction field:
1. « An engineer at the service of the city » by Vincent Servais, GREISCH
2. « Circular economy with positive impact (C2C) applied to urban areas » by Steven Beckers, Architect ESASLB
3. « The necessary integration of transport infrastructure » by Dr. Thierry Goger, Secretary General of FEHRL - Europe’s National Road Research Centers
A one-day pre-course on May, 24th 2016 was organized the courses related to Geophysical methods applied to civil engineering was done by prof. Frédéric Nguyen and Behavior of structures subjected to fire was done by Thomas Gernay.
The 165 papers including 40 posters were presented in five parallel sessions which covered a wide spectrum of the topics related to materials and structures, wood, steel, bio-based materials, soil mechanics and geotechnics, Building information modeling (BIM), methods, transfers, life-cycle assessment of materials and others.
In parallel with the conference, the 34th edition of the René Houpert Award has been organized through five parallel sessions. 24 young junior researchers have been presented their PhD works and 5 candidates have been nominated for the final presentation. The 2016 René Houpert Award has been winning by Phd. Joanna Eid for its original contribution: « Élaboration d'un éco-géo-matériau de construction à base de terre crue ».
AJCE, Vol. 34, No. 1 Special Issue, 2016 Foreword, ii/ii
On behalf of the scientific committee of AUGC, we would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks the local organizing committee and in particular to Prof. Luc Courard; to all our contributors and participants for their carefully prepared, stimulating and thought provoking manuscripts; to the co-organizers of the one-day pre-course for their dedicated task; to the members of the Technical and Scientific Committee for their time and effort of reviewing the papers and their valuable assistance, without which the conference and this special issue could not be formed.
Sofiane Amziane (Chair of the Scientific Committee)
Prof. Institut Pascal UMR 6602 Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, Université Clermont Auvergne, France
Olivier Plé (Chair of the Administration Committee)
Prof. LOCIE / CNRS / Institut National l’Énergie Solaire, Université Savoie Mont Blanc, France
