@article{eb85096ea98b44dcab0cdea74f8e1d10,
title = "Preface",
author = "Ioana Luca and Tai, {Yih Chin} and Kuo, {Chih Yu}",
note = "Funding Information: All the authors are deeply indebted to Prof. Kolumban Hutter for bringing them together, for his motivating enthusiasm and involvement along the research progress of the group and for the invitation to prepare this book within the Springer series, Advances in Geophysical and Environmental Mechanics and Mathematics. We dedicate our most sincere acknowledgement to him. I. Luca takes the opportunity to express her great intellectual debts to F. Bouchut and M. Westdickenberg, whose paper [1] in Comm. Math. Sci. inspired her work in modelling gravity-driven shallow mass flows. Sincere gratitude goes also to all of those who made her research stay so enjoyable in Puli (National Chi Nan University), Taipei (Academia Sinica) and Tainan (National Cheng Kung University), ending as a fascinating life experience. Y.C. Tai and C.Y. Kuo express their sincere gratitude to Prof. Wai-How Hui for lecturing on the unified coordinate method during his stay in Academia Sinica, Taipei, in 2005, which inspired them to the concept of the non-conventional route. During the preparation of the manuscript, we received tremendous help from our colleagues, research assistants and students: Profs. Jia-Jyun Dong, Chien-Chih Chen, Chyi-Tyi Lee, Rou-Fei Chen, Kuo-Jen Chang, Yu-Chang Chan, Toshihiko Shimamoto, Mr. Yang-Chen Lin and Mr. Che-Ming Yang, for their efforts in rock/soil laboratory experiments and field studies; Mr. Ying-Tsao Li, Shen-En Lin, Ms. Ruo-Ying Wu, for their help in numerical simulations and results presentation; Profs. Ruey-Der Hwang, Pi-Wen Tsai and Mr. Shao-Kuan Wei, for seismic motion analysis; and Ms. Chia-Chi Shen, for typing drafts of iterated versions of different chapters. We thank all those who have supported us in this endeavour; the former and present students and scientific researchers for the fruitful collaboration that made this book possible. The grants received from the various Taiwanese research organizations and agents: Academia Sinica, Ministry of Science and Technology (former National Science Council), National Chi Nan University and National Cheng Kung University are greatly appreciated. Without their support the research would not have been possible.",
year = "2016",
language = "English",
pages = "vii--ix",
journal = "Advances in Geophysical and Environmental Mechanics and Mathematics",
issn = "1866-8348",
}