Construction and monitoring of a test embankment for evaluation of the impacts of climate change on UK transport infrastructure

Our climate is set to change significantly over the next century. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has recognised the importance of climate change and have introduced the Building Knowledge for a Climate Change (BKCC) programme, this has now been followed up by the Sustaining Knowledge for Climate Change (SKCC) programme. EPSRC and the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) are working together to fund consortia (academia and stakeholders) to study the potential long term impacts of climate change in the UK on the built environment, transport and utilities. BIONICS is concerned with the establishment of a research facility (a full-scale embankment) which will be fundamental to improving the understanding of the long-term impact of climate change on infrastructure embankments and inform industry and stakeholders of the adaptation strategies required to mitigate the effects. The initial research programme utilising the BIONICS embankment is assessing the impact of climate change on embankment vegetation, developing a modelling capability for the prediction of long-term behaviour of embankments subjected to a changing climate and beginning to develop a methodology for identifying at-risk sections of the transport infrastructure. This paper will describe the design, construction, and testing of the test embankment. Testing data demonstrates the difficulties encountered in trying to reproduce older less effective compaction techniques with modern plant and equipment and the effects of different compaction methods on construction generated pore water pressures.