A Sustainability-Based Approach for Geotechnical Infrastructure

Urban growth needs large cities, and the current emphasis on landscape preservation makes using underground spaces an opportunity and a significant necessity. However, underground construction techniques significantly impact the sustainability of the built environment, including infrastructure systems and their entire supply chains. Nowadays, there is a shortage of quantitative methodologies to assess and measure the sustainability of construction and underground building processes towards the three sustainable pillars, i.e. environmental, social, and economic. Thus, this study aims to cover this gap by explaining how to appropriately incorporate sustainability goals into geotechnical projects to address measure-driven strategies and eco-design-based solutions. This study illustrates a novel methodology based on the Life Cycle Thinking approach, with an emphasis on geotechnical ground improvement techniques. The proposed method incorporates the concept of the EU Taxonomy, following the EU Green Deal, with the Envision framework to guide decision-makers toward a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable infrastructure design. The proposed method will incorporate a cradle-to-site Life Cycle Assessment perspective, improving the quantitative estimation of the environmental performance of construction processes and providing guidelines to systematically assess the sustainability of geotechnical infrastructures.