Dr Daniele Cazzuffi

Leader of the “Geosynthetics and Environmental Geotechnics” group at CESI SpA, a consulting engineering company in Milano, Italy.

After a degree in Civil Engineering (Politecnico di Milano, 1979) and a Master in Geotechnical Engineering (University of Padova, 1981), since the Eighties he has been involved in research and design programs, regarding the use of geotextiles, geomembranes, related products and associated technologies in many practical applications, in Italy and abroad, in the field of geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering, with particular reference to dams, reservoirs, canals, waterways and tunnels.

In 1989-1990 he spent a sabbatical year in important academic and engineering institutions in United States and Canada and then in the early Nineties Daniele Cazzuffi has been Visiting Professor in Geotechnics at Florence and Calabria Universities and lately, from 1994 till 2002, at Trento University in Italy.

He is author or co-author of more than 300 papers and an active member of many different national and international technical committees. In particular, he has been President of IGS (International Geosynthetics Society) from 2002 to 2006 and today he is President of CEN (European Committee on Standardization) TC 189 on Geosynthetics, President of the Italian Chapter of IGS, i.e. AGI-IGS, and Convenor of WG 3 (Mechanical Testing) of ISO (International Standardization Organization) TC 221 on Geosynthetics.

He is also member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Geotechnical Society, i.e. AGI, and an active member of the Editorial Boards of Geotextiles and Geomembranes, of Geosynthetics International and also of the Bulletin of ISSMGE (International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering) .

Daniele Cazzuffi was appointed as keynote lecturer at the 9th International Conference on Geosynthetics, held in May 2010 in Guaruja (Brasil), with the lecture titled  Geosynthetic barriers systems for dams and he received the “Paolo Scolari 2011” Award at UNI in Milano (Italy) in April 2011 for his “outstanding leadership for the development of national, european and international standards on geosynthetics, related products and associated technologies, in view of a sustainable environmental protection”.

Moreover, he received the IGS Award at EuroGeo 2 in Bologna (Italy) in October 2000 and also the IGS Honorary Membership at the 10^th International Geosynthetics Conference in Berlin (Germany) in September 2014. He had also the honour to be the first LMNS Lecturer on the subject Evolution in design of geotextile filters in occasion of EuroGeo 6 organised by the IGS Turkish Chapter in Ljubljana (Slovenia) in September 2016.

His article titled Lifetime assessment of exposed PVC-P geomembranes installed on Italian dams, written together with Domenico Gioffrè (Pavia University), received the honourable mention among the best papers of the year 2020 for the Geotextiles & Geomembranes journal.

More recently, he presented the keynote lecture on Geosynthetics in tunnels and underground structures applications at the GeoAfrica 4 conference, held in Cairo (Egypt) in February 2023, and also the invited lecture on Geomembrane barrier systems for construction and rehabilitation of embankment dams at the 7th Asian Regional Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, held in Astana (Kazakhstan) in August 2023.

Finally, he has been the Chair of the Organizing Committee of the 12th International Conference on Geosynthetics – 12 ICG  held in Roma (Italy) in September 2023.

Canal lining with geosynthetics will be illustrated both for the new construction and also for the rehabilitation purposes. In particular the use of polymeric geomembranes and of bituminous geomembranes will be described in presence of the different types of support, i.e. soil layers or cement concrete slabs or bituminous concrete. Some guidelines concerning the main properties of the different types of geosynthetics to be adopted will be also proposed.

Moreover, waterproofing and drainage systems of tunnels will be detailed: in conventional tunnelling, polymeric geomembranes are nowadays used with fluid barrier function, while nonwoven geotextiles and geonets are commonly employed with mechanical protection and drainage functions. After some descriptions of the main requirements of the geosynthetics used in tunnels and underground structures, the durability aspects of the materials forming the waterproofing and drainage systems will be finally outlined.