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Geo-environmental considerations in transport infrastructure planning

Dissertation

Publicerad 2016-10-14

Caroline Karlsson defended her PhD thesis

Time: Fri 2016-10-14 14.00

Location: Kollegiesalen, Brinellvägen 8, KTH

Subject area: Land and Water Resources Engineering

Doctoral student: Caroline Karlsson

FACULTY OPPONENT:  Professor Jaoa Manuel Coutinho Rodrigues, University of Coimbra, Portugal
EVALUATION COMMITEE: Adj. prof Lars-Ove Lång (SGU and Chalmers); adj. prof (em) Dr Inga-Maj Eriksson, Trafikverket; docent Karin Ebert, Stockholm University; Ann-Catrine Norrström, KTH (reserve)
CHAIR: Dr Magnus Svensson, KTH
MAIN ADVISOR: Prof Bo Olofsson, KTH
ASS.ADVISOR: Docent Ulla Mörtberg, KTH
 

The research was hosted by the Division of Land and Water Resources Engineering , KTH. The dissertation can be found here . Please also visit the project website ..

Abstract

Transport infrastructure constitutes one of the key factors to a country’s economic growth. Investment in new transport infrastructure might cause potential environmental impacts, and if a project has several alternative corridors open for suggestion then each alternative corridor will have a different impact on the environment. The European Commission has stated that the natural resources are important to the quality of life. Therefore, the efficient use of resources will be a key towards meeting future climate change and reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This implies that in an evergrowing global society the resource efficiency as well as the choice of transport infrastructure corridor becomes even more important to consider. The aim of this research project was to contribute to early transport infrastructure planning by the development of methods for and implementation of easy understandable geological criteria and models for decision support. Moreover, the intention was to assess how geological information can be developed and extracted from existing spatial data and coupled with other areas of interest, such as ecology and life cycle assessment. It has previously been established that geological information plays an important role in transport infrastructure planning, as the geological characteristics of the proposed area as well as the possibilities of material use influences the project. Therefore, in order to couple geological information for early transport infrastructure planning, four studies (Paper I-IV) were undertaken where methods were developed and tested for the inclusion of geological information. The first study (Paper I) demonstate how optional road corridors could be evaluated using geological information of soil thickness, soil type and rock outcrops, bedrock quality and slope in combination with ecological information. The second study (Paper II) shows how geological information of soil thickness and stratigraphy can be combined with life cycle assessments (LCA) to assess the corresponding greenhouse gas emission and energy use for the proposed road corridors. The difficulty of using expert knowledge for susceptibility assessment of natural hazards, i.e. flooding, landslide and debris flow, for early transport infrastructure planning was presented in the third study (Paper III). In this study the expert knowledge was used in a multi-criteria analysis where the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was chosen as a decision rule. This decision rule was compared to the decision rule weighted linear combination (WLC) using two different schemes of weighting. In all the mentioned studies the importance of soil thickness information was highlighted. Therefore, the fourth and final study (Paper IV) presented a new methodology for modelling the soil thickness in areas where data is sparse. A simplified regolith model (SRM) was developed in order to estimate the regolith thickness, i.e. soil thickness, for previously glaciate terrain with a high frequency of rock outcrops. SRM was based on a digital elevation model (DEM) and an optimized search algorithm. The methods developed in order to couple geological information with other areas of interest is a tentative step towards an earlier geo-environmental planning process. However, the methods need to be tested in other areas with different geological conditions. The combination of geological information in GIS with MCA enabled the integration of knowledge for decision making; it also allowed influencing the importance between various aspects of geological information as well as the importance between geological information and other fields of interest, such as ecology, through the selected weighting schemes. The results showed that synergies exist between ecology and geology, where important geological considerations could also have positive effects on ecological consideration. Soil thickness was very important for GHG emission and energy whereas stratigraphical knowledge had a minor influence. When using expert knowledge the consistency in the expert judgements also needs to be considered. It was shown that experts tended to be inconsistent in their judgements, and that some consistency could be reached if the judgements were aggregated instead of used separately. The results also showed that the developed SRM had relatively accurate results for data sparse areas, and that this model could be used in several projects where the knowledge of soil thickness is important but lacking. It was concluded that geological information should be considered. By using GIS and MCA it is possible to evaluate different aspects of geological information in order to improve decision making.