Water introduces both opportunities and risks to urban areas. Buoyancy caused by rising groundwater has been cited as one of the biggest challenges for underground structures. This issue is exacerbated by global warming and environmental change. The unpredictable nature of underground water fluctuation can have detrimental effects on the quality of underground infrastructure, and often reduces the functional viability of basement space in a building. Hydrostatic pressure, coupled with the difficulty of treating and disposing of this water due to its incompressibility and mineral content, presents a greater structural safety and environmental concern for geotechnical engineers working in this ever-changing environment. The latest building green infrastructure designs integrate available water and energy consumption to improve buildings' adaptability towards climate change. Engineers today need a superior alternative to conventional methods for dealing with hydrostatic issues. This alternative should consider cost, schedule, quality, safety, and constructability from an overaLl life-cycle cost perspective. This paper examines the current practice on anti-floating methods and describes hydrostatic pressure relief technology (HPR), which has been used in the building industry for decades. A case study describes an HPR application, including system configuration, material specifications, and construction sequence. This system has shown satisfactory performance over ten years of monitoring. HPR offers an innovative solution to long-term water problems in building basements. The relief of hydrostatic pressure through a water distribution system makes underground spaces more resilient and adaptable, thus reducing theirvulnerability to future climate changes.
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