Fumio Tatsuoka
IGS President

A Message from the New IGS President for 2006 to 2010
By Fumio Tatsuoka

It is my great honour to have been elected President of the International Geosynthetics Society (the IGS), one of the well-established learned societies in the field of engineering, and I would like to thank my IGS colleagues for their support. Over the last four years, the IGS was able to play major and essential roles in Geosynthetics Engineering all over the world and grew under the strong leadership of our Immediate Past President Daniele Cazzuffi. Now we have 1811 individual members (compared to 1841 four years ago) and 109 corporate members (90 four years ago), and 27 chapters (20 four years ago). I believe that this success can be attributed to the right and relevant policies of the IGS put forward by Dr Cazzuffi; i.e., 1) more and better communication; 2) more and better education; 3) more and better interaction between practitioners and academics; 4) more and better links with other International Associations; and 5) expansion (chapters and structure). We should continue these policies for the coming years for a further development of the IGS. I believe that more specific goals for the new term 2006 – 2010 are the following:

1) More IGS chapters, particularly in ‘new’ areas and more local activities of the IGS chapters

Now, more than 93 % of the IGS individual members belong to the IGS chapters. I believe that the IGS can grow much more and Geosynthetics Engineering can be much better recognized and established all over the world if more IGS chapters are established, in particular in the new areas in Asia, Africa, South America and East Europe, where the use of geosynthetics is expanding and there are a number of potential IGS chapters. The most efficient way to achieve this goal is more and better local activities and communications (e.g., newsletters, journals, conferences, workshops, seminars, lectures, training courses and so on) in local languages through local organizations and local human relationships, in addition to global ones from the IGS. It is my personal experience from my long activities as the chairman of the IGS Japan chapter that most IGS members (individual and corporate) enjoy their memberships from the local activities of the IGS chapters. At the same time, we have to carefully avoid such a situation that only small part of the members of a given local or domestic geosynthetics society are IGS members. It is strongly recommended that all, or as many as possible, of the members of a local organization be IGS members.

2) Increase the IGS individual members

Over the last four years, compared with a large increase in corporate members, the individual membership did not increase noticeably. The membership fee income from the corporate members is now about two times that from the individual members. If this trend continues for the coming years, we will lose a balance in the atmosphere of the society. An increase in the individual membership, in particular in the young generations and in ‘new’ areas, is our first priority for the next term. To this end, we need:

1) Better and more clear definitions of the benefits of the IGS members;

2) More effective and efficient promotion of the IGS not only by the IGS officers and other council members but also by the IGS chapters; and

3) Possibly, a revision of the fee system. The current individual annual fee is 45 US $ per member, which may be reasonable to many IGS individual members in well developed countries. However, this may not be the case with most of the current and potential individual members in developing countries and also many young generations in well developed countries. The problem is one of the most difficult issues we are now facing and the IGS must find a solution, as discussed below.

3) Sound finance

One of the keys for healthy society activities is to maintain and ensure sound society finance: i.e., a well organized and planned balance between the income and the expense. There are several issues:

• First, we must always seek efficient and cost-effective administrations of the IGS.

• Second, we have to keep the member fee as low as possible to increase the membership.

• Third, the society always needs more income to achieve necessary activities.

• Fourth, it is necessary to maintain the society structure while responding to a number of requests from the IGS members that may need expense.

Therefore, it is reasonable to explore the IGS fee system. There are different opinions and proposals as follows:

1) No change of the fee?

This is what we decided in the Ordinary General Assembly held during the 8ICG, Yokohama. If we continue the present fee system for the coming long period, we cannot respond to a request of lowering the fee.

2) Change the fee?

2a) Increase? Then, it will become more difficult to increase the individual and corporate members in developing countries and in young generations. Moreover, there is a danger of losing current members.

2b) Decrease? Then, we will have to increase the number of individual and corporate members to maintain the current income.

2c) Differential fee system? Currently we have one member, one vote at one fee. I believe that the voting is not only a right but also a duty of IGS member. The introduction of different fees per individual member depending on country economic conditions is inconsistent with the current voting system. Can we introduce associate memberships with a substantially reduced fee without voting rights? Should associate members (at greatly discounted fees) receive the same benefits as full members? Will current members seek to become associate members? This is a contradiction in our goals.

4) Increase the corporate membership

Of course, we should continue our uppermost efforts to increase the IGS corporate membership, because a strong corporate member system is one of the most unique and positive features of the IGS. At the same time, we need more active interactions between practitioners and academics or among manufacturers, designers, contractors, researchers and educators taking advantage of this unique feature via conferences (e.g., Practitioners and Academics forum as attempted in the 8ICG Yokohama), IGS committee activities, Training courses, IGS News, ……..

5) More active communications

Indeed, active and efficient communications among the members is one of the original objectives of the IGS as a learned society. To this end, we need the following:

1) More comprehensive contents and functions of the IGS Web site. In particular, we need more functions by which the IGS members can enjoy exclusive benefits; such as free access to electronic distribution of information available only to the IGS members (the IGS directory, the texts used for training course; lecture notes and other valued documents)

2) Continuation of the IGS official journals, Geotextiles and Geomembranes; and Geosynthetics International and free access by IGS members. I believe that necessary financial support to the publication of these two journals should be continued. I believe that having these high-level international official journals makes the IGS unique and different from many other geosynthetic engineering organizations.

3) Continuing support and help to international conferences, symposia, workshops that are to be held under the auspices of the IGS. The most prestigious are the International Conferences on Geosynthetics (ICGs). The 8ICG in Yokohama was the latest of the eight conferences that have been held every four years. The next one, the 9th ICG, will be held June 2010 in Brazil. To ensure a great success with the 9ICG, we will have to help the organising committee as much as possible by submitting a great number of high level technical papers and participating in the conference and exhibition as much as possible while promoting the 9ICG outside the IGS. I will help the organizers of the 9ICG as much as possible, as not only the IGS President but also the chairperson of the organizing committee for the 8ICG. The next important international conferences for the coming years are the IGS regional conferences: 2-5 Mar. 2008: GeoAmericas 2008 (Cancun, Mexico); 17-20 Jun. 2008: Geosynthetics Asia 2008 (Shanghai, China); and Sep. 2008: EuroGeo4 (Edinburgh, UK).

4) I believe that we should give the IGS auspices to as many geosynthetics conferences, symposia and workshops as possible if their themes are linked to Geosynthetics Engineering and they are international, open to IGS members and benefit IGS members through fee discounts. The importance of recognition and support of local conferences, symposia, workshops organized by IGS chapters cannot be over-emphasized.

5) Organisation of training courses: One of the most effective ways to promote geosynthetics engineering as well as the IGS in areas where we have no IGS chapters is to hold IGS training courses. It is one of the responsibilities of the IGS to prepare training course logistics to this end. Such logistics, meaning materials, guidance and instructors will also be useful to training courses that are to be organised by existing chapters and held in conjunction with the IGS international conferences, symposia and workshops described above. A large part of the expense needed to hold training courses is often the traveling cost for the lecturers if the event is not held in conjunction with major geosynthetic conferences. In such a case, one method to defray costs is to find sponsors, perhaps among the IGS corporate members. Another method is the possibility of an IGS loan to the organizers. The IGS Education Committee has prepared a set of leaflets describing geosynthetics engineering as a tool to support and promote the training courses.

6) More active interactions between “the IGS officers and council” and “the IGS chapters
In the past, when the number of IGS chapters was quite limited, the representation of the IGS chapters in the decision making process of the IGS was not well defined and the council members, including the officers, were the major players in decision making. The IGS chapters must participate in relevant decisions on many issues of the IGS and the IGS must be well informed by knowing and understanding the situations, policies, opinions, and needs of the chapters. With the advent of the regional committees (Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America) the chapters can be active in the regional committees and contribute to the management of the society.

Fumio Tatsuoka
IGS President