Levees are particularly susceptible to damage during seismic events, and failure mechanisms can involve large deformations due to soil liquefaction within and below the levee. To assess the liquefaction potential below the levees, and for the purpose of planning liquefaction mitigation measures, in-situ and/or laboratory investigations must be carried out. This is a challenge, especially due to the great length of the levees, and the limited financial and time resources available for carrying out the investigations. This paper provides an insight into two examples of investigation work carried out to determine the liquefaction potential and gives an overview of the design measures to remediate the underlying soil. These are the Pušćine levee in Međimurje County, which was reconstructed due to insufficient height in terms of flooding, and the Hrastelnica levee in Sisak-Moslavina County, which was damaged in the 2020 Petrinja earthquake. While numerous dynamic penetration tests were carried out on the Pušćine levee to assess the liquefaction potential, Hrastelnica levee assessments relied on the static (cone) penetration tests. The paper further discusses step forward in mapping the spatial variability of liquefaction potential under the levees, through the efforts of ongoing LeveeLiq project.@en

To identify the unknown values of the parameters of Burger’s constitutive law, commonly used for the evaluation of the creep behavior of the soft soils, this paper demonstrates a procedure relying on the data obtained from multiple sensors, where each sensor is used to its best advantage. The geophysical, geotechnical, and unmanned aerial vehicle data are used for the development of a numerical model whose results feed into the custom-architecture neural network, which then provides information about on the complex relationships between the creep characteristics and soil displacements. By utilizing InSAR and GPS monitoring data, particle swarm algorithm identifies the most probable set of Burger’s creep parameters, eventually providing a reliable estimation of the long-term behavior of soft soils. The validation of methodology is conducted for the Oostmolendijk embankment in the Netherlands, constructed on the soft clay and peat layers. The validation results show that the application of the proposed methodology, which relies on multisensor data, can overcome the high cost and long duration issues of laboratory tests for the determination of the creep parameters and can provide reliable estimates of the long-term behavior of geotechnical structures constructed on soft soils@en

The continuous monitoring of long-term performance of tunnels constructed in soft rock masses shows that the rock mass deformations continue after construction, albeit at a rate that reduces with time. This is in contrast with NATM postulates which assume deformation stabilizes shortly after tunnel construction. This paper proposes the prediction of long-term vertical settlement performance of a tunnel in soft rock mass, through the inclusion of a Burger’s creep viscous-plastic constitutive law to model post-construction deformations. To overcome issues related to the complex characterization of this constitutive model, a neural network NetRHEO is developed and trained on a numerically obtained dataset. A particle swarm algorithm is then employed to estimate the most probable rheological parameter set, by utilizing the long-term in-situ monitoring data from several observation points on a real tunnel. The paper demonstrates the potential of the proposed methodology, using displacement measurements of two adjacent tunnels in karstic rock mass in Croatia. The complex interaction of a railway tunnel Brajdica and a road tunnel Pećine, conditioned by the character of the surrounding rock mass as well by the chronology of their construction, was evaluated to predict the future behavior of these tunnels.@en

Rock bolts represent a critical element for many rock mass stabilization, tunnel construction, and underground work projects. Therefore, the evaluation of their condition is vital for proving their functionality over the entire life-cycle of structures. A number of techniques for quantifying condition of rock bolts are presently applied or are being developed. These include acoustic-based and vibration-based methods, which take advantage of various types of sensors and signal-processing tools. This paper provides an overview of available non-destructive test methods for rock bolts, considering both current practice and state of the art approaches.@en

Since more than 95% of the existing European railway network is older than 100 years, the ageing has unavoidably caused its gradual degradation and there is currently a strong need for risk assessment associated with this type of infrastructure. To increase the safety aspects, as well as to reduce the cost of remediation, railway infrastructure managers need to have more advanced tools on their disposal, since they currently make safety critical investment decisions based on poor data and an over-reliance on visual assessment. As a consequence their estimates of risk are therefore highly questionable and largescale failures happen with increasing regularity. The paper presents the efforts conducted within the framework of some relevant scientific-research projects funded by the Horizon 2020 programme, whose overall goal is to implement and to further develop state-of-the-art techniques and tools in field of railway infrastructure safety.@en