Geographic Information System (GIS) is a tool for managing, processing and analyzing the spatial digital data and one of the new information technologies. It has the possibility of solving various difficult problems. Considering the future development of rock engineering, it still remains a lot of problems such as social and environmental engineering problems, which can not be solved using the current technology. In this paper, the state of arts of GIS technology is introduced, and then some advanced application examples in the rock engineering field are shown. Finally, the possibility of GIS applied in the rock engineering is discussed and the future vision of utilizing GIS technology in rock engineering field is mentioned. It is concluded that the environmental impact assessment, the protection of life and properties against the natural disaster and the creation of better environment and health will be the important issues of the rock engineering in the future. In order to solve these difficult problems, the utilization of GIS technology can expect an effective and useful technology for decision making of them. On the future prospect of GIS application to rock engineering, the followings are important: 1) preparation of data, 2) coupling of GIS with various analysis, 3) establishment of synthetic assessment method and 4) temporal and spatial phenomenon analysis in GIS. And, to develop the future GIS application for rock engineering, not only the progress in GIS technology itself, but also the action of the rock engineers and the researchers are also important.

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A new field test method was proposed for the purpose of directly measuring average stress-strain relationships and to investigate strength and deformation characteristics of rock masses. The test is conducted on a hollow cylindrical specimen prepared at the bottom of a drill-hole. Average axial as well as lateral strains can be measured in a center hole and an outer slit by a novel technique of instrumentation for cavity deformation. A set of test equipment for this test method was developed and improved at Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, CRIEPI, in Japan. The purpose of this paper is the technical notes of application to some rock masses in different rock type. Trial series of tests were carried out at the site of rhyolitic tuffacious rock and rudaceous rock of Neogene system. The results, similar to conventional laboratory triaxial tests, proved that the proposed test method was successful in measuring average stress-strain relationships of large rock specimens.

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A non-dimensional second rank tensor F_ij, called the crack tensor, has successfully been introduced to deal with geometrical aspects of microcracks (fabric) such as anisotropy and crack density. Unfortunately, however, its usage for practical purposes is rather limited because its determination involves tedious and time-consuming laboratory work. We seek the possibility of using the directional change of longitudinal wave velocities to conquer the difficulty associated with the determination of crack tensors. A new second-rank tensor V_ij is introduced, such that the directional change in the longitudinal wave velocities is represented in terms of the tensor, and the crack tensor F_ij is then given as a function of V_ij. Based on the analyses of the crack tensors for one intact and several damaged samples of Inada granite, we then discuss how microcracks grow through the whole inelastic process, terminating at brittle failure. The conclusions are summarized as follows: The second-rank symmetrical tensor V_ij (or its inversion tensor V_ij^-1) can be determined experimentally, with sufficient accuracy from the directional change in the squared longitudinal wave velocity. It is found that the tensor changes markedly so as to reflect the fabric of the damaged Inada granite formed by open microcracks. The principal axes of V_ij^-1 are coaxial with the principal axes of F_ij so that both tensors are correlated in terms of their principal values F_i and V_i^-1.

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Monitoring the slope displacements can help them assess the stability of the slope. The most important issue when monitoring the slope behavior is how to interpret the behavior and then assess the stability from the monitoring results. This summary describes a new type of monitoring system using GPS and a method for assessing the slope stability based on monitoring results which the authors have proposed.

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