Investigating water holding barriers for climate adaptation

CACTUS (Climate Adaptation Control Technologies for Urban Spaces) is an ongoing research project that is investigating the development of “climate adaptation composite barrier systems” capable of limiting the impact of a changing environment on buried geo-infrastructure, such as retaining walls and foundations. The project partners are investigating: (i) a range of potential soil types (with amendments) that will meet the desired requirements of climate adaptation engineered barriers (permeability and water holding capacity); (ii) the independent and combined impacts of wet-dry and freeze-thaw cycles on the volume change and strength characteristics of the potential barrier materials; (iii) appropriate species of vegetation that can promote removal of water from the water holding layer; (iv) experimental modelling of stress-deformation characteristics (lateral and axial) of the soil systems when subject to wetting and drying; (v) numerical modelling of the composite barrier systems to develop protocols for implementing the novel systems; (vi) trial implementation of the proposed technologies at field scale.