Groundwater Modelling to Inform Environmental Assessment of Road Tunnelling project

Urban tunnelling projects can result in local water table declines and groundwater gradient changes. These impacts have the potential to destabilize building foundations and mobilize contaminated groundwater. This project involved construction of a regional scale FEFLOW model to simulate the impact upon groundwater flow of a major road tunnel below the city of Melbourne, Australia. Linear uncertainty analysis was used to rapidly assess the potential range and magnitude of impacts for a large number of alternative predictive simulations and decisions.