2024 ISRM International Symposium & the 13th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium

New Delhi, 22 – 27 September 2024

The 2024 ISRM International Symposium was combined with the 13^th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium (ARMS13) which was held in New Delhi, India between 22 – 27 September 2024. The theme of the symposium was Advances in Rock Mechanics – Infrastructure Development; a very fitting theme considering the major boom in infrastructure development resulting from India’s ambition to advance from the 5^th to the 3^rd largest economy in the world by 2047. Many of the presentations were centred around establishing the infrastructural requirements for a rapidly developing nation, including impressive road, rail and tunnel projects through the Himalayas. 

Highlights of 2024 ISRM Symposium:

1. A heartfelt memorial session to Eda Quadros: Eda was an inspiring person who was the heart and soul of the ISRM for many years and made significant contributions to the ISRM through her roles as President, Vice President for Latin America and an active member of numerous commissions. 

2. 2024 Rocha Medal awarded to the best PhD, was awarded to Kazuki Sawayama for his research on “Study on the Relationships between Fracture Flow Behaviours and Geophysical Properties for the Quantitative Monitoring of Fractured Reservoirs”. It is an extremely impressive piece of research which looked at modelling and correlating changes in fracture permeability, resistivity and elastic wave velocity of joints under increasing normal stress by coupling experimental data with digital fracture simulations. 

3. 2024 Franklin Lecture awarded to a mid-career ISRM member who has made a significant contribution to a specific area of rock mechanics and/or rock engineering, was awarded to Vikram Vishal for his lecture title “Geomechnical Constraints in Geological Carbon Dioxide Sequestation”. India releases 40 Gigatons of CO2 every year, and Vikram is looking at using the basalts as carbon sinks for CO2, by injecting and simulating the precipitation of CO2.

4. Keynote Lecture 1: Ömer Aydan presented on “Damage to Rock Engineering Structures by the February 2023 Great K. Maras Earthquakes hit Türkiye and some implications on their seismic design”. A team of highly celebrated professors namely Ömer Aydan, Reasat Ulusay (author of the Blue book) and Halil Kumsar went on a reconnaissance mission to capture the earthquake damage covering a distance of 500 km. Notable damage: 3 m offset in a tunnel along the fault axis, major damage to tunnel portals from rock fall, the Erkenek Dam was offset by 3 m, fortunately at the time of rupture there was no water being stored in the reservoir, major damage to pylons, major damage to transport corridors on elevated embankments, sinkholes developed in karst topography. They discussed interesting phenomena such as Earthquake Lights and recordings of weird animal behaviour preceding the event. They recommended that tunnels across faults should be enlarged to accommodate fault movement and to rather keep road/rail embankments close to the natural ground surface when crossing faults.

5. Keynote Lecture 2: Nick Barton presented on “Celebrating 50 years of Q System Development for Infrastructure Design and Follow-up”. Nick discussed the many iterations and major projects that were used in the progressive development of the Q System through the decades. He showed how representative some of the results from the empirical calculation were to actual measured deformation. He discussed the development of the Q_TBM, and the empirical development of Q_Slope based off large datasets taken from the Australian mining industry. 

6. Cultural Banquet: The cultural diversity of India was showcased by an impressive array of well-choregraphed dances with exquisite costumes.

The 2024 ISRM Council Meeting was held the day before the ISRM Symposium where 44 out of the 61 member nations where represented. The agenda of the council was as follows:

• Reports from the President, Vice Presidents and Secretary General 

• Committee reports: Education Fund, Young Members, and Communication

• ISRM Budgets

• Revision of a few ISRM By-Laws. Notable changes include: non-members can submit papers to ISRM Congresses, increases in the number of papers or pages that can be included, and Rocha Medal Eligibility: “To be considered for an award the candidate must be a member of the ISRM and the official doctorate degree certificate must have been obtained in the two calendar years preceding the year of the selection of the award. This is: for the Rocha Medal 20xx, the selection takes place in the year 20xx-1, and the official doctorate degree certificate must have been obtained in the years 20xx-3 or 20xx-2”

• Voting for the 2026 ISRM Congress between Eurock 2024 (Skopje, North Macedonia) and ARMS14* (Fukuoka, Japan), see Table 1.

Table 1. Upcoming ISRM Sponsored conferences.

ISRM India hosted an extremely well organized ISRM International Symposium attended by > 300 people. A diverse range of topics covered by ~ 190 papers, including: site investigation, modelling, advancements to laboratory testing, drilling, blasting, slope stability, rock support, instrumentation, tunnelling, underground storage, deep underground mining, monitoring, geohazards, risk management and sustainability, case studies. Delhi was a great host city with the numerous large infrastructure projects for the technical tours and numerous historical landmarks to visit.