Applications of GIS in Geotechnical Engineering: Some Case Studies

Geographical Information System is a very effective tool for capturing, displaying and analyzing geographically referenced data. GIS has shown a very important role in various aspects of geotechnical engineering including preliminary site investigations, identification of potential project barriers (like mines etc), interpolation for obtaining data at inaccessible locations, data visualization, data processing as well as preparation of post processing graphs and charts. This paper highlights some of the case studies ranging from soil survey planning to soil management, and furthermore, hydrologic response unit generation using GIS. The results illustrate the vast potential of GIS towards effectively resolving geotechnical engineering problems under diverse scenarios. Future research is being carried out in the areas of soil mapping using GIS, expert knowledge and fuzzy logic.