Upgrading geomaterials: from waste to resource

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.