Climate change impacts on geotechnical infrastructure
Climate change impacts on geotechnical infrastructure
When undertaking designs for developments and infrastructure, geotechnical engineers now need to account for uncertainty due to climate change. For many years engineers have designed considering historical precedent, such as rare long-term flood events. Now, however, we have to accept these may be more frequent. In other areas climate change may result in periods of long duration drought with less frequent, but higher intensity, rainfall. These effects mean that geotechnical engineers must now consider different conditions which take account of a constantly changing environment over the lifetime of the structure. Geotechnical engineers must also be careful in material selection in order to achieve a required design life when ultimately, the conditions encountered now and are designed for, will change. This paper discusses these issues and how geotechnical engineers can take account of climate change in their designs.
C. A. Bridges
18th European Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ECSMGE2024)
E - Environment, water and energy
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