Development of geotechnical Micro zonation maps using gis and Generalized correlation between In situ measurements and Engineering properties

Abstract

Of the civil engineering construction material, soil is unique inbeing a natural material, most often engineered, as it exists, unlike otherprocessed or manufactured material like concrete or steel, which can beprocessed to suit specific requirement. Hence, property characterization of thesoil is an important aspect of geotechnical engineering practice. Thedetermination of engineering properties of soil by testing often needs to besupported by predictions mainly because of two reasons. One, the volume ofsoil that can be tested in any project within the time constraints andeconomical feasibilities is only a very small fraction of the total volume ofsoil involved. Secondly, the present-day construction practice is such that thecost savings for elaborate testing may be outweighed by savings in time byprediction with accuracy acceptable at engineering level.Geotechnical engineering project typically concentrates on thesubsurface site condition and the interaction of man-made structure with theearth mass. For this purpose, the geotechnical engineer is required to collect awide range of sub-surface information. In such case, the use of informationand data base management system can help with the problem-solving processfor geotechnical engineer and can be a cost and time effective. Thisnecessitates the collection of enormous geotechnical data which are availablefrom various sources and their framing in a single GIS model that could beused by a whole range of geotechnical fraternities. newline