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Gilson Gitirana, Ph.D

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Professor, Universidade Federal de Goias, Goiânia, GO, Brazil

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Unsaturated soil behavior in the context of resilient cities and infrastructure in tropical regions

Biography

Gilson Gitirana is Professor at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Universidade Federal de Goias, Goiania, GO, Brazil, where he teaches and develops research in Geotechnical Engineering. He has supervised over 40 Ph.D. and M.Sc. students, published over 150 peer-reviewed articles in journals, papers in proceedings, books and book chapters. He has been president of the Technical Committee for Unsaturated Soils of the Brazilian Association for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering and is currently Co-Editor of the Soils and Rocks Journal. His main research efforts are in coupled hydro-air-thermal-mechanical simulation, soil-atmosphere modelling, probabilistic analysis, slope stability, and three-dimensional modelling. Prof. Gilson Gitirana has collaborated with the industry on several Research and Development projects, including Bentley, SoilVision and Eletrobras Furnas. Most present and past R&D projects deal with computational mechanics and the implementation of unsaturated soil mechanics in Geotechnical Engineering practice.

Abstract

Unsaturated soil mechanics plays a central role in the design of resilient cities and infrastructure subjected to extreme weather events. This is particularly true in tropical regions where the water table is often deep, and climate is characterized by distinct dry and wet seasons. Changes in rainfall patterns associated with climate change may lead to an increase in damage due to mass movements, floods, and erosion processes. Critical infrastructure is severely affected, including that associated with energy and transportation. An unsaturated soils mechanics framework and analysis protocols centered on the soil-water characteristic curve allow the difficult quantification of soil-atmosphere interaction and soil behavior. In this context, the main factors controlling the SWCC of soils typically found in tropical regions are presented. Recent development related to the modeling of the SWCC of tropical soils are discussed, including issues such as uncertainly assessment, the prediction of behavior based on readily available soil data and the use of machine learning techniques. Several examples of applications of unsaturated soil mechanics in the context of extreme weather events are presented and discussed, including slope stability analysis, the use of infiltration systems for flood control, the behavior of pavement structures subjected to wide water content fluctuations, and erosion processes.

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