Subsidence-induced damage to the built environment: a new research program focusing on challenges and needs

Damage inflicted to the built environment as a result of anthropogenic induced subsidence is a hazard that has been reported all over the world. This primarily occurs in low-lying urbanized coastal zones such as Venice, New Orleans, and Jakarta, but has also been observed in upland urban conglomerates like Tehran and Mexico City. In the Netherlands, subsidence induced damage is estimated to exceed over €20 billion in the coming decades (Van den Born et al., 2016). Besides damage to buildings, subsidence can compromise the integrity of critical infrastructures, such as flood protection structures, (rail)roads, pipelines, and underground cables. The built environment can be damaged by subsurface activities ranging from groundwater level management to deep resource extraction. Besides existing subsurface activities, there are multiple anticipated changes that can exacerbate subsidence-induced structural damage in the Netherlands: (i) housing shortage, forcing to build in our most subsidence prone areas; (ii) the transition to renewable energies (geothermal and Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage, ATES) which can lead to additional subsidence; (iii) the closing of the Groningen gas field, forcing gas production at other locations; and (iv) increased drinking water extraction accelerating local subsidence processes. At present in the Netherlands, damage induced to the built environment is dealt with only after its occurrence. This leads to often unresolved issues with respect to the contribution of subsidence to the damage which has been observed. This reactive approach stems from the lack of knowledge and lack of tools to accurately assess the causal relationship between subsidence and damage. In this contribution, we present the outline and preliminary results of a new multi-disciplinary research program ‘Subsidence and Building Damage’ currently in progress at TNO, which aims to fill in these gaps to predict subsidence and the related damage to the built environment.