The 2nd Global Geosynthetics Summit will be held May 19 to 20, 2016 in New Delhi, India. The summit will highlight the strong focus on infrastructure, which include roads and bridges, railways, and coastal and river protection. Through this program, it will address India’s ambitious infrastructure initiatives, related standards, gaps needing to be filled in regulation, and opportunities for geosynthetics.

The goals of the summit are: take stock of existing guidelines, code provisions, and accreditation processes for adopting geosynthetics in the event’s infrastructure sectors of focus; gather key stakeholders to deliberate on mechanisms for encouraging geosynthetics as an innovative solution; identify the hurdles faced by agencies in adopting geosynthetics solutions and how their concerns can be addressed; review available product specifications, design guidelines, existing publications and the extent of their implementation; discuss how available resources or new guidelines could mandate the implementation of geosynthetics in infrastructure; adapt international guidelines to Indian conditions; develop a larger accredited geosynthetics testing laboratory network in India; encourage life-cycle cost analysis method for evaluating the real economic cost of the project; assess carbon foot print of infrastructure projects; make use of geosynthetics mandatory for all road and railway projects to the extent of a minimum percentage of the total project costs among others.

The previous iteration of the summit was held in September 2014 with the theme ‘Enhancing the Application of Geosynthetics in Infrastructure.’