IFSTTAR
The French Institute of Sciences and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (IFSTTAR) was created on January 1st 2011 from the merging of INRETS and LCPC. Both institutes have a long-standing recognition in both France and abroad in the area of transportation, infrastructures, natural hazards/risks and urban engineering. IFSTTAR is a French State-owned research Institute under the authority of the Ministry for Higher Education and Research and the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development, Transport and Housing. A great number of IFSTTAR research projects are carried out within a European framework, through programmes of the European Union or actions carried out directly by several laboratories.
The different activities of the Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Environment and Risks are the following: characterization of soils and rocks, soil-structure interactions, landslides and earthquakes, flooding, water and soil pollution, urban hydrology.
In the field of earthquake engineering and seismology, IFSTTAR is a leader of the French Accelerometric Network (http://www-rap.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/). It also operates several large experimental facilities such as an earthquake simulator on a geotechnical centrifuge and develops various numerical approaches (BEM, FEM, FDM) to estimate the seismic ground motion and to investigate soil-structure interaction (e.g. http://www.cesar-lcpc.com/).
