Protecting road and rail slopes

摘要

Vital infrastructure such as road and railway slopes could be better monitored and maintained,thanks to a project by researchers in the UK.in Britain alone, there are 748,000 properties with at least a 1-in-100 annual chance of flooding, while train derailment caused by slope failure is the greatest infrastructure-related risk faced by the railways.The cost of infrastructure failures is also high, with emergency repairs costing Network Railten times as much as planned works, which in turn cost ten times as much as maintenance.A£4.8m EPSRC-funded project, led by researchers at Newcastle University, is aimingto gain a better understanding of the way linear infrastructure deteriorates under increasing environmental pressures, such as more extreme weather, accordingto project leader Dr Stephanie Glendinning, of Newcastle's School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences.