A research team led by Profs Charles W W Ng, Y H Wang and Limin Zhang, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Prof Qian Zhang, Computer Science and Engineering, has been awarded its second three-year consecutive Collaborative Research Fund (CRF) grant from the Research Grants Council. 

 

This multi-disciplinary research project, called "Green Slope Engineering: Bioengineered, Live Cover Systems for Man-Made Fill Slopes and Landfill Capillary Barriers in Hong Kong", received HK$8 million for a study starting from July 2013, the largest amount for an engineering-based project in the 2012/13 funding exercise. 

 

Hong Kong has thousands of man-made fill slopes that require upgrading, with the Hong Kong government's Geotechnical Engineering Office spending tens of millions of dollars each year to carry out such work. Moreover, capping design for landfills does not consider the use of vegetation for minimizing rainfall infiltration and gas emission integrally. Vegetation is just used for aesthetic purposes. The research will explore root-soil-water interactions to create an innovative, reliability-based preliminary design framework for developing a sustainable, integrated bioengineered live cover for slopes and landfills in Hong Kong, using vegetation as part of engineered stabilization measures in the design of slope stability. The live cover seeks to be self-regenerative, sustainable and almost maintenance free.