Can We Build on Landfills?

When we think about land development, former landfill sites rarely top the list of prime real estate. Yet with increasing pressure on available land, particularly near urban centres, these seemingly undesirable locations are gaining attention from developers and engineers alike. A project undertaken at Geofem demonstrates how modern technology and engineering solutions are making it possible to transform these challenging sites into viable development opportunities.

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"Modern technology is transforming yesterday's waste sites into tomorrow's development opportunities."

The Challenge: Unstable Ground

The developers in this project proposed constructing a hydrogen plant on the edge of a former municipal landfill in the UK. The plan included a settlement-sensitive hydrogen bullet tank - precisely the kind of structure you wouldn't typically want to place on unstable ground.

The fundamental challenge with landfills lies in their ongoing settlement. As waste materials decompose through chemical and microbial processes, the ground gradually compacts and subsides. This settlement is notoriously difficult to predict accurately, making construction projects risky without proper assessment and mitigation strategies.

Traditional monitoring approaches would have required expensive equipment or frequent site visits over several months just to gather enough data to identify trend. Even after determining settlement patterns, differential statements - where different areas settle at different rates - would remain a potential hazard to the hydrogen plant's infrastructure.

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Innovative Solutions: Satellites and Soil Engineering

Our engineering team at Geofem tackled this challenge with a two-pronged approach combining cutting-edge technology with proven geotechnical principles.

First, our team employed Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) analysis - a satellite-based technology that allowed them to retroactively measure settlement across the entire landfill surface over the previous two years. This remarkable capability provided immediate insight into settlement trends without the delays and expenses of traditional monitoring methods.

"Understanding settlement patterns is the key to unlocking landfill development potential."

As Philip Brain, Head of Operations at Kiwa Gastec, noted: "Geofem measured landfill settlement trends for the previous two years to help us assess a site's suitability for development and then provided us with a concept design for a reinforced soil platform to mitigate those settlements."

With this historical settlement data in hand, geotechnical engineers developed a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) model of the landfill edge, incorporating information about the lining, capping layer, and natural ground conditions. We validated our model against the actual settlement measurements from the InSAR analysis, creating a reliable prediction framework for future behaviour.

The solution they proposed was elegant in its simplicity: a reinforced soil platform designed to distribute the load and mitigate differential settlement that could affect the hydrogen tank. This approach offered significant advantages over alternatives, as it required neither improvement of the landfill material itself nor any disturbance to the critical capping layer that prevents environmental contamination.

The Benefits: New Life for Old Landfills

This case study demonstrates several key benefits of applying modern engineering approaches to landfill development:

1. Comprehensive Insight: For the first time, stakeholders gained access to settlement measurements across the entire landfill surface, providing valuable information about the site's current condition.

2. Data-Driven Decisions: With accurate historical settlement data, developers could make more informed planning decisions about the site's developed potential.

3. Non-Invasive Solutions: The reinforced soil platform solution allowed development without disturbing the landfill or compromising its protective capping layer.

4. Cost-Effectiveness: The approach eliminated the need for expensive ground improvement techniques while still enabling productive use of otherwise challenging land.

Looking Ahead

As our societies continue to grapple with limited land resources and growing development needs, former landfill sites represent a significant untapped potential. With innovative technologies like InSAR analysis and creative engineering solutions like reinforced soil platforms, these sites need not remain permanently unstable.

"With the right engineering approach, environmental liabilities become valuable assets."

The key lies in understanding the unique challenges of each site and applying the right combination of monitoring, analysis, and mitigation strategies. By doing so, we can transform these erstwhile wastelands into valuable assets - whether for renewable energy facilities as in this case study, or potentially for other appropriate development types.

While not every structure will be suitable for former landfill sites, this case demonstrates that with proper engineering approaches, we can indeed build on landfills - turning environmental liabilities into development opportunities.

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