20th C. W. Lovell Distinguished Lecture

Wednesday, September 16, 2026 @ 5:30 p.m.
Wetherill Laboratory of Chemistry, Room 104
Purdue University - West Lafayette, IN

Professor Kenichi Soga
Donald H. McLaughlin Chair & Distinguished Professor
University of California, Berkeley

Smart Geotechnical Infrastructure to Realize Performance-based Design and Operation

Advances in sensing and data analytics now allow engineers to observe how infrastructure truly performs. This lecture proposes a performance-based monitoring framework that pairs conventional conservative design predictions with "most probable" predictions, defining performance thresholds spanning construction and operation. Two case studies illustrate the approach: distributed strain monitoring of post-grouted shafts, revealing load transfer, bending, and construction effects hidden from conventional gauges; and thirty years of water pipeline failure data, where modern machine learning models match but do not surpass empirical experience, underscoring the need for early-warning monitoring. Embedding intelligence during construction enables progressive modification, performance-based maintenance, and sustainability.

About Professor Kenichi Soga

Kenichi Soga is the Donald H. McLaughlin Chair and Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is the Director of the Berkeley Center for Smart Infrastructure and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Educated at Kyoto University and Berkeley, he taught at the University of Cambridge before joining Berkeley in 2016. His research spans infrastructure sensing, performance-based design, energy geotechnics and soil behavior. he co-authored the textbook Fundamentals of Soil Behavior. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and the Engineering Academy of Japan.