Optimising the environmental impact of deep foundations

A recent UN report has shown that the construction industry is one of the seven major sectors that contribute significantly to environmental pollution and was responsible for around 20% of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2020, and this is expected to increase during the upcoming years unless preventive actions are taken (UN Environment program, 2021). Many studies have addressed the carbon footprint of superstructures including life cycle assessments, trials to reduce the quantity of material used in construction and discovering new production techniques with lower environmental impact (Hawkins et al., 2020). However, the carbon footprint of substructures has only been investigated to a limited extent, this is believed to be due to a lack of certainty in the mechanical behaviour of soil and its interaction with structures as well as the construction complexity for deep foundations (Sandanayake et al., 2016).