UPGRADE seeks to broaden the research scope of the involved teams, focusing on tackling key challenges in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. Specifically, it aims to pioneer innovative solutions for repurposing waste geomaterials generated by construction and mining industries worldwide. Waste geomaterials represents half of the waste volume generated in EU. These waste geomaterials generally exhibit poor engineering characteristics that prevent their direct use at construction/mining sites. However, if adequately treated, they could represent an excellent resource for construction purposes with significant money saving and reduction in the environmental footprint, thus contributing to the establishment of a circular handling/management of geomaterials. To achieve this, UPGRADE will develop protocols, software and tools to improve the engineering characteristics of waste geomaterials, and to guarantee the performance level over the service life of geostructures built from waste geomaterials considering site-specific conditions. The fundamental concern of UPGRADE is to promote strategies for sustainable use of waste geomaterials generated by geoengineering activities, and to determine how to turn a waste geomaterial into a durable material, with a positive revenue stream. The originality of UPGRADE's approach is that not only it draws expertise on the environment and geotechnics, but also in computer sciences, geochemistry, analytical chemistry, natural resources exploitation, and in the circulatory economy. We intend to form a multidisciplinary consortium composed of 10 academic and 5 industrial beneficiaries and 6 Third Country partners which aim to address this problem. UPGRADE will create an international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral network of creative and innovative researchers and practising engineers ready to face geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering challenges which arise in the vanguard of technological innovation.

With the rapid economic and social development in the industrialised and developing countries, these communities are increasingly at the forefront of most pressing challenges. Along with the many social and economic benefits of urbanisation comes a plethora of construction and environmental problems, some of staggering proportion. One of these problems results from the evolution of the development strategies of urban areas. Indeed, contrary to what has been done for decades, there is a tendency to increase housing density in urban areas and in certain neighbourhoods. This would led to a reduction of car travel, a better use of public transportation, and thus to a reduction of pollution. In this context, one strategy is to use former industrial areas abandoned during the last 20 years to develop new housings / commercial zones. Most of these abandoned areas are situated at the edges of existing cities. Nevertheless, there are a number of issues that need to be addressed. These soils can be considered as problematic soils from a geotechnical point of view (clay, organic soils, and sediments). There is also a major environmental issue related to the quality of the subsurface environment that is being adversely affected by former industrial, municipal, mining and agricultural activities. Therefore, there is a need to develop innovative integrated and collective multidisciplinary approaches to deal with these issues at the European level, from geotechnical and geoenvironmental points of view. This will then permit a more efficient management of problematic areas both from the geoenvironmental and geotechnical points of view. The proposed research program will bring together expertise in civil engineering, geochemistry and geoenvironmental engineering to achieve these objectives. The combination of these approaches may decrease material inputs, reduce energy consumption and emissions, recover valuable by-products and minimise wastes. Therefore, there is a need to develop innovative integrated and collective multidisciplinary approaches to deal with these issues at the European level, from geotechnical and geoenvironmental points of view. The proposed research network GeoStab will bring together expertise in civil engineering, geochemistry and geoenvironmental engineering to achieve these objectives. The main objective associated to this ANR project is to foster the creation of the GeoStab network. The present members of the network established some research priorities and actions to be undertaken. To carry out its research program, the network will apply for funding at the EU level. The network will apply for an “Innovative Training Network” program (Marie Curie Action) for the call of 2015 under the coordination of Université de Lorraine. The intended form of the ITN will be a European Training Network (ETN). The creation of this research network is in line with the first societal challenges identified within the call for proposal Strategic Agenda “Efficient resource management and adaptation to climate change” and within the European Research Programme “Horizon 2020” challenge “Climate action, resource efficiency and raw materials”. This project will contribute to development of solutions for better use of raw materials from construction and demolition waste. The research will promote a network of partners in the area of soil stabilisation / solidification with a focus on sustainable methods. It would also foster the protection and sustainable management of natural resources for construction. The involvement of private partners reflects their will to increase competitiveness of soil-construction-waste treatment-related industries.

GeoRes aims to expand the scope of the involved teams’ research in addressing some of the outstanding challenges in geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering: developing innovative solutions for the reuse of waste geomaterials generated by construction and mining industries across Europe. Geomaterial waste represents half of the waste volume generated in EU-27. These waste geomaterials generally exhibit poor engineering characteristics that prevent their direct reuse on construction/mining sites. However, if adequately treated, they could represent an excellent resource for construction purposes with significant money saving and reduction in the environmental footprint, thus contributing to the establishment of a circular economy. To achieve this, GeoRes will develop protocols, software and tools to improve the engineering characteristics of waste geomaterials, and to guarantee the level of performance over the service life of geostructures built from waste geomaterials considering site-specific conditions. The fundamental concern of the research in the GeoRes network is thus to develop strategies and tools for sustainable reuse of waste geomaterials generated by geoengineering activities, and to determine how to turn a waste geomaterial into a valued durable material, with a positive revenue stream. The proposed network is at the interface of two domains of engineering; geotechnical and geoenvironmental. Even today, it is not easy to find researchers with expertise in both geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering. We intend to form a multidisciplinary and intersectoral consortium composed of 8 academic and 6 industrial beneficiaries and 6 Third Country partners which aim to address this problem. GeoRes will create a multidisciplinary and intersectoral network of creative and innovative researchers and practising engineers ready to face geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering challenges which arise in the vanguard of technological innovation.