Digital Engineering in Infrastructure Geotechnics

This paper shares recent experience dealing with the massive site investigation dataset on a major road infrastructure project, in the context of ISO19650, and from a geotechnical engineer’s perspective. This subject project includes a freeway-to-freeway interchange, with 6.5 km of freeway widening and the associated geotechnical design of 20+ bridges and civil works. This paper demonstrates the importance of the evolving technology, which enables data-centric thinking to be applied to the geotechnical risk identification. It is shown that “first-pass” qualitative geospatial models play an important role in the early identification and quantification of design risks for the optimisation of overall design at the bidding stage. The paper discusses the process and the difficulties incorporating the variety of historical data into the project-specific geotechnical dataset, and the progressive collection, homogenisation and refinement from various sources and formats, for a dynamic collaboration with other design disciplines in regard to the geo-spatial, laboratory and field test data, thereby driving a cost-effective geotechnical design.