ABSTRACT
Geotechnical engineering is rooted in the collection of field data. The advent of mainframe computers in the 1960’s, workstations in the 1970’s, desktop computers in the 1980’s, and notebook computers in the 1990’s profoundly changed the laboratory and office component of engineering, bringing numerical simulation methods first into the academic setting and later into many consulting offices. Corresponding advances in computer aided design (CAD) tools led to the widespread use of electronic drafting to prepare site plans, illustrate reports, and analyze field data. The transition to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), computer cartography tools that combine the drawing and illustration power of CAD with the analytical and archiving power of databases, has led to even greater degrees of automation, analytical tool use, and information sharing based on computer technology. This transition is by no means complete; most geotechnical engineers use GIS in at most a limited way, reflecting both the unfortunate complexity of these tools and the relative paucity of specialized geotechnical tool components (often called extensions) for industry-leading GIS software tools.
