Grant: Alliance Grants

The Canadian railway industry is unique in that it must maintain tens of thousands of kilometres of tracks that traverse diverse physiographic regions. Assessing ground hazard risk in diverse physiographic and geologic domains presents a significant challenge to railway engineers as linear facilities are inherently exposed to a wider variety and higher frequency of ground hazards than single site facilities. Ground hazards encountered along railways are classified as: earth landslides, rock landslides, subsidence, debris slides, flow erosion and stream erosion. These ground hazards cause a significant annual loss, estimated by the railway industry, to be in the millions of dollars, primarily from damage to infrastructure and interruption of business. All engineering projects have risk. Our ability to assess this risk is dependent on our understanding of the processes and hazards involved. Research will include (1) developing and evaluating monitoring technologies for the investigation of ground hazard mechanisms and warning systems, (2) investigating the impact of extreme weather events and adaptation to climate change, and (3) assessing multi-scale hazards; and (4) evaluate the effectiveness of soft subgrade remediation efforts. The program will be carried out at the University of Alberta and at Queen's University, in close collaboration with the industry partners. The results of this research will inform and contribute to necessary improvements to infrastructure over the next couple of decades. This will increase the reliability and resiliency of Canada's railway networks and enable industry operations/infrastructure to adapt to new rail traffic requirements and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. The dissemination of results to the wider technical community and the training of HQP to solve real world engineering problems are essential elements of this program.