Site investigation as tool for elimination of natural hazard impacts on construction projects

Abstract: We present an adapted translation of the report “Site investigation as tool for elimination of natural hazard impacts on construction projects” (Pospisil, Rozsypal, 2017), which was made by Czech geotechnicians in Prague at the International “Building up efficient and sustainable transport infrastructure 2017” (BESTInfra2017). This review paper was also published as an article in the journal “Materials Science and Engineering” by the publishing company of the British scientific society “Institute of Physics” (IOP) that is now virtually international. It is an open access article under the CC BY 3.0 license that allows it to be distributed, translated, adapted, and supplemented, provided that the types of changes are noted and the original source is referred to. In our case, the full reference to the original paper (Pospisil, Rozsypal, 2017) for the presented translation is given in the end. Natural hazards and their impacts on traffic structures represent the most risk factor during the construction phase and maintenance of traffic structures. The article deals with the process of site investigation focused on elimination of natural hazard impacts on the structures. It is described the importance of gradual assessment especially of rock environment conditions in relation to a specific traffic structure. A significant role plays the cooperation between foundation designers and site investigators especially for right classification of the geotechnical category and final determination of the characteristic values for documented rock formations. The positive and negative roles of standardized approaches included in various standards are also considered.
 

Keywords: site investigation; engineering-geological conditions; hydrogeological conditions; natural hazards; risk assessment; design; construction; road structures.