IntroductionHow can life be made safer, healthier and moreprofitable? These are questions faced by peopleand cities in delta and coastal areas worldwide.For centuries, the Netherlands has acted as a

test site for innovations in spatial planning, allsorts of construction, and water management.Due to the dense population, a large part of thecountry could be considered an urban area andwith the profile of a low-lying area near thecoast, there is an on-going battle against theintrinsic flood risks of life in a low-lying country.How are we facing the geotechnical challengesand opportunities that come with these twomajor issues of Safety and the Quality of theliving environment?

Urban Challenges: Quality of living environmentTo live and work in a densely populated countryplaces certain demands on the living environment.A high demand for mobility and residential areas cannot easily be met without puttingpressure on the way we built roads, metroconnections and houses. Cost overruns, longbuilding times, nuisance due to noise and -pollution or damage to the surroundings are notacceptable. A clean and healthy environmentdirectly relates to opportunities and risks withinthe subsoil. This is also generally true forconstructions in existing urban areas, both above and below ground.

Urban Challenges: SafetyFloods risks are long known in this low-lyingarea and present challenges now and especiallyalso in the future as a result of expected climate

change. Sea level rises combined with landsubsidence constantly demand our attention.The challenge to The Netherlands in the comingcenturies is not primarily a threat; it also offersnew prospects. Changing the way our countryis managed creates new options; working withwater may improve the quality of the environ-ment and offers excellent opportunities forinnovative ideas and applications.

Geotechnical challenges: Costs and failure costsThe Dutch and Belgium delta roughly consists ofsand deposits from the sea, clay from the riversand peat formed on top of it. The result is anunderground patchwork of soft and less soft layerswith an (extremely) high groundwater level,where (rail) road foundations deform, wherecities are built on piles, where undergroundconstruction presents a major challenge andwhere contamination can spread in an unpredic-table way. For large projects, where soil mecha-nics constitutes a relevant part, costs and timeseem not well predicted; they usually overrunseriously, and sometimes it goes wrong entirely.Soft soil conditions and subsequent challengespresented above represent an important costcomponent in the realisation of constructionprojects, specifically those concerned with soil,road and hydraulic construction in an urbanenvironment. GeoRisk management aims toreduce uncertainties about the structure,behaviour, and use of the subsoil.

Figure 2 Deep Excavation at NorthSouthline in Amsterdam. Photo: Projectbureau NoordZuidlijn

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Summary

Mandy Korff Deltares

How can life be made safer, healthier andmore profitable? These are questions facedby people and cities in delta and coastal areas worldwide. This article describes someexamples of how geotechnical professionalsin The Netherlands face the challenges andopportunities that come with the majorissues of Safety and the Quality of the living environment. The answer lies in theDutch way of cooperative research anddevelopment and the effort that is put intechnical developments with an integral view on safety and sustainability such asrelated to risk perception, training andeducation, ICT developments and guide-lines for practical implementation. A large role is present for research anddevelopment alongside projects.

Figure 1 Aerial photo city of The Hague, The Netherlands Photo Ewout Staartjes

Challenges and opportunities in Dutch urban areas

GEOtechniek – Special 17th ICSMGE – Alexandria – Egypt 5

The main answer to these three challenges isfound in the Dutch way of cooperative thinking.Large research and innovation projects are con-stantly running with a large number of partners.These programs include stakeholders fromindustry, such as contractors and engineeringfirms, combined with universities, knowledgeinstitutes and public bodies. This mix plays animportant role in the validity of the researchperformed and the speed with which it isimplemented in practice. This article shows anumber of these innovations.

Fruitful base improves environmentLarge projects can provide an importantpossibility for applied research on the job. New techniques can be validated and testedin practice and field data and experiences canbe used to learn from and can result in newprediction models. For example, the North Southline subway project(see Bezuijen et al and Korff et al, Table)provides the opportunity to validate currentstate of the art methods and improve thembased on a unique amount of field data available.The Dutch Centre of Underground Construction(www.cob.nl) plays an important role in this,combining all types of stakeholders in thebuilding industry. Data from the current projectalready proved valuable to increase under-standing of building damage and the effeciencyof compensation grouting, which helps to reduce to influence of construction for under-ground works.

Important lessons have also been learned in theRandstadRail project in Rotterdam (see Thumannet al, Brassinga & Oung in Table), where a largesoil body is frozen to deal with the combinationof new and existing infrastructure in a denseurban area. In a number of other projects taken from the top20 largest projects from the Dutch Ministry ofPublic Works generic lessons were learned usingGeoRisk Scans. These scans proved to be a suc-cessful tool for managing geotechnical risk. VanStaveren et al. (see Table) present conclusionsthat are widely applicable in geo-engineering.

Besides project related research, also jointindustry projects are an important way to improvethe quality of the living environment. Piledfoundations are necessary to construct stableand durable structures in soft soil areas. Theincreasing number of pile systems, complexityof structures and possible re-use of piles leadto demands for the Rapid Pile Load Test in

The Netherlands. However, the rapid method ishindered by a lack of appropriate and generallyaccepted calculation methods. Combining indus-try and science in a joint industry project (seeHölscher et al, Table) was the key to removethese hindrances by developing tested and wide-ly accepted guidelines. Advisors, constructors,principles and building authorities joined in andcurrently the guidelines are drafted. This redu-ces the risks which are related to capacity andstiffness of the pile foundation and improves thepossibilities to reuse foundations, which bene-fits the durability of the building sector.In addition, the railway industry combinedefforts to reduce the effects of soft soils oninfrastructure. Transition zones between embank-ments and rigid structures (e.g. a bridge) generatehigh maintenance costs for railway infrastructureproviders. In order to reduce maintenance, afield test on a transition zone at a typical softsoil site identified the most probable mecha-nisms of failure (See Hölscher et al, Table).

Shared problems, shared benefits to improve safetyJoint industry projects also combine knowledgeand integrating disciplines to meet the demandfor safety against flooding. A Dutch consortiummade the international headlines by making ahundred-metre-long dike (levee) collapse (seeVan et al, Table). The Smart Dike that failed ispart of a unique facility for testing dike monito-ring systems. The six-metre-high flood defencewas toppled by major stability problems, exactlyas intended. A wide range of advanced monito-

ring equipment in and around the dike wastested and a detailed picture of the failuremechanism was obtained. The Smart Dike project involves cooperationbetween sensor and information technologydevelopers and suppliers on the one hand andresearch institutes and water management aut-horities on the other. The Smart Dike is an inter-national affair as tried-and-tested technologydoesn’t just come from The Netherlands andknowledge developed here benefits everyone. It shows that multidisciplinary research withpartners from different industries combiningefforts can speed up the innovation necessaryto meet the challenges of flood safety.

Within another framework, INnovations onStability Improvement enabling Dike Elevations(INSIDE) new concepts for reinforcing river dikes(levees) are developed and tested. Dike reinfor-cement and higher safety levels can thus beachieved without widening the dike. In the paperby Lengkeek et al, see Table, a feasibility studyfor the application of soil nailing is presented.The novelty here is that soil nailing is applied ina clay embankment with moderate slopes on softsoil. There is little experience in this specificfield, so field testing plays an important role inthe INSIDE project. Several consortia of contrac-tors and engineering firms combine their effortwith public bodies and institutes to improvesafety without increasing land use for levees.

Impulse for the futureThe Dutch strategy for safety in future centuries

Figure 3 The Statnamic apparatus versus static counter weight.

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Figure 4 ’IJkdijk’ – large scale test facilty.

rests on two pillars: flood protection and sustai-nability. A new Delta committee (www.delta-commissie.com) recently advised to placeemphasis on development along with climatechange and ecological processes and implementthese in a Delta Programme. The Programme willbe implemented in a National Act to ensure anintegral, harmonized interface with other facetsof spatial planning, touching on such aspects asthe economy, energy, nature and landscape.Multifunctional solutions, such as wide Deltadikes combined with dwellings and infra-structure, new materials, new forms of energyand food production and ICT for risk monitoringwill all be developed to realize these ambitions.

Another ambition is to reduce failure costs inpublic works by 50% by the year 2015. Thisambition is stated by the Ministry of PublicWorks and can only be realized by cooperationof all stakeholders in the process. Based on thelead themes, such as contracts, new knowledgeand implementing existing knowledge arecurrently put together in a program called‘Geo-Impuls’. Most of the work will again bealigned with ongoing projects to speed upimplementation and innovation.

Eduction and trainingIt is however not only about creating newknowledge, but also about transferring it.

Prof. Barends in his paper (see Table) clearlyshows the importance of the human factor ingeotechnics. He suggests to reduce this elementin uncertainty, which he calls the ‘engineeringfactor’. This will lead to multi-disciplinary coope-ration, reduced variations, valuable investmentsand efforts towards intrinsic prediction modelimprovements and improves our image outsidethe profession. The geo-engineering professiondemands for a new professional attitude ofexplicitly identifying, communicating and mana-ging the inherent geotechnical uncertainties.This is required in all phases of a project, withinvolvement of all actors and stakeholders,including the client, engineer and contractor,but also representatives of inhabitants aroundthe construction site, as is shown by VanStaveren et al (see Table).

Education and training might also be the key toimprove the familiarity of engineers with riskmanagement, as is suggested by Prof. van Toland co-authors (see Table). Based on analyses ofabout 50 deep excavations in The Netherlands,their paper shows that more than 60% of theproblems were not caused by lack of knowledgebut simply by not (correctly) applying existingknowledge. The majority of the failures couldhave been avoided if proper risk managementwould have been applied. Possible weakness ofengineers starts if there is no awareness of the

role of the people factor in engineering in generaland in ground risk management in particular.The role of the individual professional, his orher inherent differences in risk perception, andhow these may contribute to geotechnical riskmanagement, are part of the education of MScstudents now. Future engineers show difficultywith acknowledging the inherently differentrisk perceptions between people, even withapparently rational human beings, such asengineering students. Do we really think thiswill be different with practicing engineers?

ConclusionsThe Dutch way of cooperative research anddevelopment is still very much alive, as can beseen in the results presented in this overviewand the subsequent papers of the Table. Overallaim is make sure the country maintains its highstandard of living in a safe and sustainable way.Those two topics form the foundation of theinnovation programs, now and especially in thenear future. This means effort is put in technicaldevelopments with an integral view on safetyand sustainability, such as by taking into accountthe people factor in risk perception, trainingand education, ICT developments and guidelinesfor practical implementation. A large role ispresent for research and development alongsideprojects. �

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Authors Title

Bagoyina, P. / Karim, U.F.A. / van der Stoel, A.E.C Large consolidation and experimental ageing of cement-based grouts

Barends, F.B.J. Beyond limits of FEM calculation methods

Bezuijen, A. / Kaalberg, F.J. / Kleinlugtenbelt, R.E. / Corrective grouting in sand to restore pile foundations, Vijzelgracht, AmsterdamRoggeveld, R.P.

Bezuijen, A. / Tol, A.F. van / Holscher, P. / Lottum, H. van The influence of pore pressures on penetration forces in sand and clay

Brassinga, H.E. / Oung, O Structural behaviour of a collar construction made of frozen soils in a deep excavation

Brinkman, J. / Water, J.G. van de / Jong, E. de Large diameter casing piles, design, testing and monitoring

Eekelen, S. / van Bezuijen, A. / Duijnen, P. van / Jansen, H.L. Piled embankments using geosynthetic reinforcement in The Netherlands: design, monitoring & evaluation

Engin, H.K. / Brinkgreve, R.B.J. Investigation of Pile Behaviour Using Embedded Piles

Hamer, D.A / den Venmans, A.A.M. / Stabilization of peat by silica based solidificationZon, W.H. van der / Olie, J.J.

Havinga, H. / Tol, A.F. van / Maijers, A.H. / Stability of slurry trenches near railwayBruijn, K. de / Jong, E. de

Hölscher, P. / Verweij, A. / Coelho, B. / Kremer, A. / Field test for reduction of maintenance of railway transition Powrie, W. / Priest, J.

Holscher, P. / Brassinga, H.E. / Rapid load field tests interpreted with the new Guideline directiveTol, A.F. van / Middendorp, P. / Revoort, E.

Hommels, A. / Molenkamp, F. Influence of different types of measurements on the inverse modelling process of a road embankment

Kooistra, A. / Oudhof, J. / Kempers, M. Geotechnical design monopile foundation Offshore Windpark Egmond aan Zee

Korff, M. / Mair, R.J. / Tol, A.F. van Building damage examples due to leakage at a deep excavation in Amsterdam

Lengkeek, H.J. / Bruijn, E. Soil nailing in clay for dike reinforcement

Luger, H.J. / Bijnagte, J. Cumulative effects on settlement damage to structures

Molendijk, W. / Zon, W. van der / Meurs, G. van SmartSoils, adaptation of soil properties on demand

Nijs, R.E.P. de / Dijck, F.A. van Performance evaluation of the MT-Pile® within the IBIS Amsterdam project

Oung, O. / Brassinga, H.E. Predicted and measured settlements due to installation and removal of sheet piles

Paassen, B. van / Dalen, J.H. van High load tests on VM-piles for the quay wall Euromax

Paassen, L.A. van / Harkes, M.P. / Zwieten, G.A.van / Scale up of BioGrout: a biological ground reinforcement methodZon, W.H. van der / Van der Star, W.R.L. / Loosdrecht, M. van

Slaats, H. / Stoel, A.E.C. van der Validation of numerical model components of LTP by means of experimental data

Staveren, M. van / Bles, T.J. / Litjens, P.P.T. / Cools, P. Geo Risk Scan - a successful geo management tool

Stoel, A.E.C. van der / Vink, D. / Kluft, D.J. / Nijs, P. den New Hoog Catharijne: a 5-levels challenging underground

Thumann, V.M. / Hannink, G. / Doelder, B.R. de Ground freezing and groundwater control at underground station CS in Rotterdam

Tol, A.F. van / Korff, M. / Staveren, M. van The education of geotechnical engineers should incorporate risk management

Van, M. / Zwanenburg, C. / Koelewijn, A. / Lottum, H van Evaluation of Full Scale Levee Stability Tests at Booneschans and Corresponding Centrifuge Tests

Wichman, B. / Knoeff, J.G. / Vries, G. de Geotechnical aspects of reinforcement alternatives of the Afsluitdijk

Challenges and Opportunities in Dutch urban areas