An automated environment for soils- and terrain-dependent applications

This paper explains the development of an integrated information environment that is designed specifically for applications dependent on information related to soil types and terrain of the project site. This covers a wide variety of applications such as shallow and deep foundations, trenching, earthmoving and tunneling. The design of this environment takes into consideration the typical requirements of the project team with an emphasis on integrating requirements for both design and construction. The environment reported here is comprised of three main modules, a relational database for the storage and display of soil borelog information, a geographic information system that displays the geographical locations of soil studies, and a module that is used to develop a three-dimensional profile of the soil layers between any number of borelogs. The user may also develop cross sections of soil layers in any direction. This paper reports on the hardware and software used and concludes with a discussion of future extensions to the system.