AGS Annual Conference 2019 – an overview This year’s AGS Annual Conference, previously known as Members’ Day returned to the National Motorcycle Museum, where AGS Members’ Day 2018 took place. As last year’s Members’ Day was so popular with attendees and sponsors, it was an easy decision to return to the same venue. The day was a great success and well attended by nearly 200 delegates.
talk on how it can be difficult communicating geoscience to dissonant and wary publics, highlighting that when information is complex, people make decisions based on their values and beliefs and people most trust those whose values mirror their own.
Chris Swainston of Soils and Mike Plimmer of Geotechnical and Environmental Associates gave a Geoenvironmental Standards update including the Standards which are due to be published shortly. Chris and Mike also looked at uncertainty The in sampling presentations and how this can be only covered a range of be reduced by geotechnical and doing more geoenvironmental sampling and topics which were testing.
“
The well received. presentations Patrick Cox covered a of AECOM range of geotechnical and provided an insight into the geoenvironmental topics Value of Ground Engineering which were well received. explaining that value is not Prof. Iain Stewart of the University of Plymouth presented an interesting
necessarily the lowest cost or the quickest solution. Patrick’s talk also covered
‘The Five Capitals Model’ which takes sustainability into consideration. More information on this model can be viewed here. Following Guy Lane’s talk on AGS data at Members’ Day 2018, Roger Chandler of Keynetix and Steve Walthall, AGS Honorary Member, provided their view on ‘Who owns data’ explaining there are still ongoing discussions about whether the producer or client own the data and suggesting that a way forward could be that AGS Data is made available to all under open license. Phil Crowcroft of ERM presented examples of Emerging Contaminants including Lead, Asbestos, Mercury, Phthalates, PFAS and Microplastics and the concerns surrounding these. During his presentation, Phil explained that not all ‘emerging contaminants’ were new substances but included contaminants which we now have a better understanding of their effect on the environment or
May 2019
7