With 201 delegates (including around 60 PhD students) and 167 papers from 28 countries from all over the world, quite large figures for a regional Unsat Conference, the E-UNSAT2016Paris Conference has been quite successfull with excellent scientific presentations and very friendly exchanges and social events. All registered authors presented their work and 18 Distinguished Lecturers provided insights into the more advanced achievements in the field, playing an important role in the interest and scientific outcome of the Conference.
The Conference was opened by the First European Distinguished Lecture (selected by TC106), delivered by Prof. Yu-Jun Cui (Ecole des ponts ParisTech, France). Two other Keynote Lectures were given by Profs Weimin Ye (Tong-Ji University, China) and Majid Hassanizadeh (University of Utrecht, the Netherlands). Six Plenary Lectures were also delivered, together with nine Invited Lectures given at the beginning of the Parallel Sessions.
General programme: the topics that drew particular interest are Advances in experimental methods, Water retention and transport properties and Mechanical behaviour, with also significant contributions on Numerical and Constitutive modelling. The practical applications that have been dealt with are Dams and dykes, Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere interaction, Slope stability, Geo-environmental applications (a session organised together with the ISSMGE TC215) and Nuclear waste disposal. The Conference Proceedings, indexed in the Web of Science database, are available in open-access (http://www.e3s-conferences.org/articles/e3sconf/abs/2016/04/contents/contents.html).
As expected and confirmed by the large number and the high quality of the papers received, the E-UNSAT2016Paris Conference fostered fruitful presentations and discussions on up to date ideas, concepts and achievements in Unsaturated Soils, from many researchers from Europe and other continents.
