Guest editors of Near Surface Geophysics are inviting the submission of papers for a Special Issue on ‘Geophysics for Infrastructure Planning, Monitoring and Building Information Modelling (BIM)’ scheduled for publication in February 2023.

The topic is of interest because geophysics and non-destructive testing (NDT) can play an essential role prior to, during, and after the construction of engineered structures and in their long-term monitoring, evaluation and maintenance. Detailed imaging of complex geology and quantification of physical properties of the soil-subsoil are among the significant roles that geophysics can play during the infrastructure planning phase. In addition to these characterisation tasks, geological risk assessment is a critical first step during the design of infrastructure projects. Meantime monitoring during and after construction are important control measures for hazards associated with infrastructure development.

Geophysical methods can also provide subsurface information at high resolution in space and time and may be used to detect subsurface objects and utilities, as well as to supplement NDT techniques to identify problem areas for targeted maintenance of ageing infrastructure. The development of new geophysical and NDT techniques and processing workflows will likely see a rise in applications in the infrastructure industry over the coming years.

In all these steps prior, during and after construction, geophysical information must be delivered in a meaningful way to geotechnical and civil engineers, planners and asset owners. BIM tools are increasingly crucial for communicating geomodels to end-users, thus aiding decision making and overall understanding of the results.

The Special Issue will focus all these issues so as to address the challenges related to the infrastructure life cycle, including subsurface characterisation, geological risk assessment for infrastructure projects, monitoring, subsurface objects and utility detection, communication of geomodels to clients and application of new and emerging technologies for infrastructure design projects and monitoring.

Timeline:

• Submission of expression of interest (10-15 lines abstract sent to the Guest Editors): 15 March 2022
• Submission deadline of the full manuscript: 31 August 2022
• Final decision on accepted manuscripts: 15 November 2022
• Publication Special Issue: February 2023

Guest editors

• Dr. Beatriz Benjumea Moreno (Geological and Mining Institute of Spain, IGME CSIC), b.benjumea@igme.es
• Prof. Alireza Malehmir (Uppsala University, Sweden), Alireza.Malehmir@geo.uu.se
• Dr. Arre Verweerd (AECOM Ltd, UK), arre.verweerd@aecom.com