Geo-Sustainable Urban Development

The project's main objective is to provide cost-effective and sustainable geo-solutions to the building and construction sector (BAE) in Norway while advancing the state-of-the-art within ground-borne vibration, underground construction and environmental remediation. Sub-goals include developing expertise on: Ground-borne vibration: the research focuses on understanding the mechanisms and developing models for the propagation and influence of frequency vibrations and low frequency noise, developing and d ocumenting sustainable mitigation measures for vibration due to transportation and construction work, and preparing guidelines for geo-sustainable urban development. Underground construction: the research focuses on developing methods for the design of tunnels and underground storage solutions, developing and interpreting methods to instrument and monitor underground constructions, developing methods to analyse tunnels and caverns and making recommendations for optimum and environmentally sound solution s. Environmental remediation: the research concentrates on developing solutions for managing waste in the ground and predicting contamination loads on the environment, developing mitigation measures for preserving freshwater in Norway and abroad, develop ing innovative remediation methods and preparing guidelines for optimum solutions to geo-environmental problems. For all three themes, the analytical work will be verified with case studies from the industry.