Structural Reliability of Hong Kong - Essay Example

With a growing population and very limited land space, the need for Hong Kong to exploit subterranean space is obvious, and also acute. Comprehensive and accurate geotechnical information about the subterranean space would be necessary to achieve this objective. Hong Kong is sufficiently compact to enable the development of a database of previously collected soil data on a national scale. The database would appropriately integrate  with value-added information that would be calibrated against careful benchmarks. For the benefit of the industry, the database could be made readily accessible via the internet. Some of the more tangible contributions are: (a) Future soil investigation may only be carried out to complement the known information. This will optimize future soil investigations. (b) The availability of a comprehensive Geotechnical   Information System coupled with accurate analysis and design will lead to well-designed projects. Careful and well-designed projects are an essential ingredient in improving productivity. (c) This development which has at its core the development of a comprehensive system will play a  major role in nudging the industry in that direction and hence leads to greater productivity in the construction sector.

In Hongkong, large volumes of geotechnical data have been collected over the years by various Government organizations in Singapore such as Housing Development Board  (HDB), Building Construction Authority (BCA), Jurong Town Council (JTC), and Land Transport Authority (LTA), and the construction industry of Singapore. However, the data are  not placed in a convenient frame work and the data are not available in digital format to other users.      

Structural Reliability in Engineering Structural reliability accounts for the ability of the structure to fulfill its design purposes throughout a certain design life. Measures of structural reliability come from every process that constitutes the life of a structure.

Most of these measures are random in nature; hence, probabilistic methods are required to quantify the participation of these different random variables in the design in order to determine the overall system stability. Sources of errors that may affect the reliability of a structure may come from humans (i.e. negligence, approximation, lack of knowledge or pure greed) or from nature.

I have been commissioned by my client to carry out a preliminary site and design all the civil and geotechnical elements for the project. A series of preliminary boreholes have been excavated in the eastern part of the route and laboratory tests have also been carried out on samples taken from the boreholes. Approximately 48 potential turbine sites have been selected from a wind simulation programme as being in the best position in terms of wind exposure. These turbine sites are spread out over an area of about 11 square kilometres.

This report deals specifically with the engineering geological description of the possible sites based on a brief site reconnaissance of the area carried out. The brief for this reconnaissance was to examine the general ground conditions in the area, based on soil and rock exposures, assess the level of seismicity and to determine the potential for landslide hazards and ground instability at the wind turbine sites and along the proposed access routes.