On the 18th June 2008 the Association of Geotechnical Specialists (AGS) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) will present "Electronic Transmission and Storage of Data – Site Investigation to Piling" The National Motorcycle Museum, Birmingham, UK.

This international event will showcase DIGGS and how the AGS continue to support its development, and will include four sessions as detailed below all of which have relevance to a DIGGS practitioner.

State of the Art

Begining with a presentation by Paul Quinn (Keynetix) explaining both some of the problems with electronic data transfer and their solutions, and how the industry needs to work together to break down the barriers to integrated data transfer. This state of the art session will also include reviews of data transfer within the USA by Salvatore Carrona (gINT Software) and in Australia and New Zealand by Phil Wade and Simon Humphreys (DatGel). DIGGS GMS member David Patterson will also present the client prospective on adopting an electronic data transfer system.

DIGGS

Chaired by Arup's Peter Whittlestone and including presentations from leading lights within the DIGGS movement such as Dr Marc Hoit (University of Florida) and Dr Roger Chandler and Chris Bray (Keynetix) this session aims to expand both the general and technical understanding of DIGGS of the real-world user as well as illustrating the future of DIGGS and introducing the various parties involved.

Current Practice

Expanding upon the state of the art the review of current practice will include case studies and examples of how electronic geotechnical data transfer works in the real world, including a presentation by Tony Suckling (Stent) on how the piling industry in the UK proposes to adopt DIGGS as their standard transfer format and from Marc Hoit, Mike McVay and Erica Hughes (University of Florida) on how they have adapted their piling database to support DIGGS.

Future

DIGGS supporter and GMS member Loren Turner (Caltrans) reports on how COSMOS have implemented DIGGS in their Geotechnical Virtual Data Center which they are readying for release later this year, David Toll (Durham University) will also present the JTC2's plans for standardising XML data transfer within the industry.

All in all it looks to be an exciting event, and with such a confluence of minds it seems to be a great opportunity to get involved with, and meet the team in charge of implementing DIGGS, along with a wide range of people who have actually implemented DIGGS.

Registration and more information is available from the AGS website or in the documents attached to this post.