With the rapid economic and social development in the industrialised and developing countries, these communities are increasingly at the forefront of most pressing challenges. Along with the many social and economic benefits of urbanisation comes a plethora of construction and environmental problems, some of staggering proportion. One of these problems results from the evolution of the development strategies of urban areas. Indeed, contrary to what has been done for decades, there is a tendency to increase housing density in urban areas and in certain neighbourhoods. This would led to a reduction of car travel, a better use of public transportation, and thus to a reduction of pollution. In this context, one strategy is to use former industrial areas abandoned during the last 20 years to develop new housings / commercial zones. Most of these abandoned areas are situated at the edges of existing cities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed. These soils can be considered as problematic soils from a geotechnical point of view (clay, organic soils, and sediments). There is also a major environmental issue related to the quality of the subsurface environment that is being adversely affected by former industrial, municipal, mining and agricultural activities. Therefore, there is a need to develop innovative integrated and collective multidisciplinary approaches to deal with these issues at the European level, from geotechnical and geoenvironmental points of view. This will then permit a more efficient management of problematic areas both from the geoenvironmental and geotechnical points of view. The GeoSTab research network brings together expertise in civil engineering, geochemistry and geoenvironmental engineering to achieve these objectives. The combination of these approaches may decrease material inputs, reduce energy consumption and emissions, recover valuable by-products and minimise wastes.
The GeoStab network gather necessary knowledge to analyse, design and construct structures, and to provide solutions to problems in the stabilisation and solidification of problematic geomaterials like soil, dredged sediments, tailings, etc. The overall aim of the project is to provide durable treatment solutions for the stabilisation and solidification of tailings and problematic soils. Several specific objectives are identified:
- To improve the physical properties of the materials to allow heap deposition, reduce dusting, and allow reuse in construction.
- To assess the weathering of the stabilised materials and its effect on the strength and the pollutant leaching.
- To identify deleterious compounds for the stabilisation.
- To assess the effect of environmental conditions such as frost, acid drainage, varying water level on the stabilised materials.
- To assess the long term strength of the solidification and stabilisation materials using modelling.