HYDROGEOLOGICAL AND ENGINEEERING GEOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Geological Hazards

In Croatia, there are more frequent dangerous appearance and processes such soil sliding, landslides, collapsing, flooding, soil and water pollution. Also, there is a constant risk of strong earthquakes which can indirectly jeopardize people and their property. For this reason, the Croatian Geological Survey empowers the research group for dealing with geological hazards and participate in such projects.

Goals

Geohazard processes in nature are almost impossible to prevent, and considering that anthropogenic impact on the environment increasingly brings people and their property into danger, it is important to systematically collect data, conduct researches and influence on the implementation of preventive measures and plans for better and safer environmental management and space management. For this reason, long-term goals are set:

• defining zones which are currently or potentially most vulnerable
• reducing of the number and intensity of anthropologically initiated geohazard events
• contribute to sustainable development and enable the production of safer and more economical spatial and other development plans
• reducing of property damage and repair costs
• reducing of human casualties and to keep human health and the environment
• to ensure the availability of collected data (professional and public).
• enable the measurements draft (regulations and laws) to avoid and mitigate the damage
• enable the production of other related bases (more detailed engineering geological and geotechnical studies, spatial plans, conceptual projects for large infrastructure facilities, environmental impact studies, seismic zonation, risk identification, etc.).

Activities

In order to achieve the set goals, the geohazard research group as a part of scientific and commercial projects will perform the following activities:

• Producing of Map of liabilities, geohazards and risks in various scales and for various purposes
• Collecting, analysing and distribution of geohazard data
• Scientific researches and publication of the results
• production of expert studies, opinions and projects
• Monitoring

At this time, the most intensive are geological researches of the most frequent geohazard processes on slopes - landslides in the whole Croatia. Also, the other movements on the slopes are explored, such as erosion, karst geohazard processes. Seismic zones maps are also producing.