ABSOILS

Background and Objectives

The Finnish infrastructure is under rapid development. Excavation in thousands of construction sites has generated and will further generate huge amounts of soil. These soils often include moraine or soft clays difficult to be utilized and therefore usually disposed of randomly as abandoned soils. The estimated total amount of abandoned soils is about 20 – 30 million tonnes in Finland each year. This number depends on the amount, sites, sizes and types of construction projects.

At the Uusimaa region alone, the amount of the annually generated abandoned soils - in most cases clays - has been about 4 million tonnes per year. A typical problem connected with the abandoned soils there is the shortage of available deposit sites in the cities, for example in Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa. In case the redundant materials cannot be used in earth construction the cities need new deposit sites which mostly can be found only outside the metropolitan area. The environmental and economic factors are among the reasons why the technical departments of the cities at Uusimaa region are strongly supporting the ABSOILS project which is believed to positively contribute into converting the difficult abandoned soil materials into valuable recycled materials for the usage in different appropriate construction applications in the region.

The ABSOILS project strives to:

provide technically, environmentally and economically feasible materials out of soft, clean or contaminated, abandoned soils (clays and other difficult materials with respect to construction) for appropriate earth construction applications like for flood protection and control structures, other sealing and support structures, noise walls and foundations. The innovative features of the project include also the usage of soft abandoned clays together with coarser abandoned stone materials.

verify that it is possible to significantly increase the utilisation of abandoned soils produced in the construction projects and to decrease the amount of land-filled waste involving long-distance transports. Consequently, large amounts of valuable non-renewable natural aggregates from rocks and hills can be saved for the more demanding purposes where they may be necessary.

create a regional material service system (RMSS) for the infrastructure development involving the collaboration of public developers and infrastructure owners, industry and constructors on the shared use of material assets: industrial waste, demolition waste, abandoned soils, and natural resources. The RMSS is planned to be demonstrated in practice for the collaboration of the cities of the Uusimaa region: Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa.

disseminate the know-how of the methods and processes and benefits of the results of the project to the target group of municipalities, road administrations, contractors, regulators, scientists and other professionals and specialists European wide and regionally in order to help other European nations to decrease their amount of waste and deposits, and to substitute secondary soil materials for the virgin natural aggregates in construction projects

Actions

The ABSOILS project is going to achieve its objectives by the implementation of the following eight actions:

Preparations action to ensure a smooth start of the ABSOILS project. The action involves decisions about the piloting sites and targeted applications; rough mapping of relevant materials and deposits at the Uusimaa region; choices of the new equipment for the project; definition of the technical, environmental and economic criteria for materials and applications; and definition of laboratory test programmes.

Materials action to produce technical, environmental and methodological materials data and information for Actions 3, 4, and 5, and to demonstrate proper test procedures for full-scale projects. The tests include geotechnical and environmental characterisation of the materials, production of appropriate material mixtures for the different pilot construction applications, and control of the effect of the variation of the properties of abandoned soils.

Applications action to ascertain that the Piloting Action (4) is based on appropriate and efficient plans to produce successful applications, and that the project will achieve full and appropriate information and data for the evaluation of the results during Verification Action 5. The action involves geotechnical and environmental survey of the pilot sites; design and planning of pilot applications; and production of written instructions for the implementation of each pilot application and for the quality control and follow-up activities of the pilot applications.

Piloting action to demonstrate the practical implementation of four challenging types of civil-engineering applications in full-scale pilots based on the use of abandoned soft soils: Flood barriers, noise barriers, supporting banks and landscape construction. The piloting sites are in the metropolitan area. The piloting is addressing details of the process from the storage, treatment and transports of materials as well as the diverse stages of construction. The abandoned soils, additives for stabilisation as well as other aggregates required will origin from the Uusimaa region.

Verification action to prove that the difficult soft abandoned soils are valuable and feasible materials for different types of civil-engineering applications. The means of verification include quality control procedures during the piloting (Action 4) and follow-up after the piloting with appropriate field and laboratory tests. The results from the quality control and follow-up can be compared with the criteria on materials and applications (Action 1), with the data obtained from the material tests (Action 2) and with the civil-engineering approximations from the designing stage (Action 3). Additionally the verification will use environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle costing (LCC) of the pilot applications in comparison with some conventional alternatives.

Modelling action to demonstrate the Uusimaa Model for Sustainable Regional Material Service System (RMSS). The RMSS will be a system to direct the use of regionally produced and generated materials and aggregates to the short-term and long-term infrastructure construction projects through the use of practical logistics and the Internet operated database. With the help of a working RMSS all feasible materials from the Uusimaa region are used for the infrastructure projects of the region and replace aggregates and additives from other regions. Consequently there are environmental benefits from reduced transports, waste generation and landfilling.

Dissemination action to disseminate and communicate the results of the project to the target group of the project so that the knowledge gained during the project can benefit the whole Europe. The dissemination tools will include the project webpage, notice boards at piloting sites, DVD-presentations, European Guidelines on the conversion of abandoned soils into useful earth construction materials, Layman’s report and all other published articles, reports and conference papers about the project. The project participants will present the project in local and national events and at several relevant conferences in Europe during the project period and after LIFE-project. Roadshows for specific target groups are going to run in Scandinavia, the Baltic Countries and Central Europe during 2013 and 2014. An international workshop will be arranged in Finland in 2014.

Management action involves the overall management and co-ordination of the project according to the details of the project plan and the financial budget and with respect to the contract with the Commission. The distinct activities of the action include for example the monitoring of the project, reporting of the activity reports to Commission. Monitoring is going to measure and document the effectiveness of the project actions as compared to the initial situation, the objectives and the expected results. The monitoring will also evaluate the Carbon Footprint of the project.

Target Group

The target groups of the ABSOILS project comprise of:

Municipalities, and road, rail and port administrations
Contractors and other construction enterprises
Legislative and permitting authorities, and politicians
Producers and manufacturers of construction materials
Industry producing relevant by-products / waste
(e.g. power plants, forest industry, metallurgical industry, mining industry)
Universities and other relevant educational institutes
Research organisations
Waste management organisations
Civil-engineering organisations and consultants