Why Go Underground

During the years from economic development, the use of underground has greatly increased for many reasons such as for mining, field of transportation with developments of roads, waterways and railways, in the field of hydroelectric facilities and many more. The underground space should put to good use which can provide the setting for activities or infrastructures that are difficult, environmentally undesirable or less profitable to install above ground. Why do we go underground? There are mainly three reasons to go underground, they are environmental reasons, social reasons and economic reasons.

Environmental reasons will be mainly discussed for this topic out of the three. One of the reasons to go underground for environmental purposes is land use and locations. Underground space are used results from lack of surface space. Sometimes facilities can't be built on the ground location because a lack of space or because that particular location is not acceptable to the community. The location of structures on the surface can be problematic. Building skyscrapers can be considered but the community shouldn't just focus on it. Besides, too many skyscrapers can promote global warming. There are issues of conflict and incompatibility of land uses, which will lead to the ruining of cityscapes as new structures interfere with existing ones. On top of that, harmful impacts of modifications made to cities may emerge in the future. Also there is a need to separate conflicting transport activities or to provide easy connections among them. The highway sector is the largest sector affecting the environment. New roads, expressways and motorways are being built and widened over time. Train stations or train interchanges require tracks to function and sometimes they are not feasible as they might cross path with the main road. Building an underground train station will be a good solution and can prevent the disruption of traffics on the road.

Besides that, another reason for going underground is isolation consideration. The ground is massive and opaque and provides a variety of advantages in terms of isolation which in turn provides an important impetus for placing facilities underground. The underground provide isolation from the surface climate. The temperatures within the soil offers a moderate thermal environment compared to the surface temperatures. These temperatures provide energy conservation and storage advantages. Underground structures are also protected from severe weather such as thunderstorms and hurricanes. Moreover, underground structures can resist to earthquake motions. In terms of protection, the earth provides protection by absorbing the shock and vibrational