Effects of Climate Change on Geotechnical Infrastructures — state of the art

Abstract

Geotechnical infrastructures, like slopes and embankments, retaining walls, foundations, engineered landfills, overburden dumps, and pavements, get continuously exposed to various environmental factors which are climate dependent. Fate/stability of these infrastructures due to extreme and abrupt change in precipitation, temperatures, humidity, and wind/airflow is quite questionable. Some of the issues related to climate change on soils include increase in infiltration rate, high pore-water pressure, decrease in effective stress, soil liquefaction, seepage failures, frost heaving, changes in soil suction potential, swelling and shrinkage in fine-grained soils, differential settlement, and damage to vegetation cover and thereby causing slope failures, waterlogged conditions, floods, soil erosion and/or internal erosion of fines, damage to landfill liners and soil covers, desertification, desiccation cracks on the ground surface, and groundwater table pollution due to contaminant migration. Therefore, studies on the impact of climate change on geotechnical infrastructures have gained attention of many researchers in the recent times. In present study, an up-to-date review of the works related to the influence of various climatic factors on geotechnical properties and thereby on geotechnical projects is carried out. Topics related to climate data downscaling using global climate models (GCM), climate change-induced slope instability, acid rains, desiccation cracking in soils with changing temperatures, impacts of dry-wet cycles and freeze-thaw cycles, and vegetation effects on soils are emphasized in this paper. Furthermore, to address the challenges, need-based research related to resilient infrastructures, thermo-hydro-mechanical models, bioremediation methods, innovative sustainable composite materials, and incorporation of climatic factors in design is highlighted and discussed.