Towards Sustainable Geotechnical Engineering

Abstract

Today, the global awareness of preservation of the environment has become the focal point of many human disciplines. Much of the emerging scientific and engineering efforts are being directed to maintain the harmony between new developments and the important three E’s: Environment, Economy and Equity. Such studies are essentially needed in response to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming, rapid depletion of natural resources and other similar ecological hazards and it is from this context that sustainable engineering came to life. Sustainable engineering aims at ensuring the well-being of the current and future generations with sustainable geotechnics, as a sub-discipline within engineering, covering a wide range of topics related to the sustainable development of civil engineering infrastructure and society. Sustainable geotechnics deals with material recycling, and the utilization of geothermal renewable energy and alternate materials in geotechnical engineering constructions. In this paper, a brief overview of this sub-discipline of geotechnical engineering is presented aiming at connecting the broader scope of sustainability to traditional geotechnical research and practice.