EngD position: Optimizing Spatial Design of Utilities in Urban Underground

When engineering utility lines, designers need to adhere to technical design requirements regarding their placement (including location, trace, depth, and minimum distances to buildings and other utilities). This becomes challenging as new energy networks, water retention solutions, and other buried objects compete for the same underground space as existing networks. Excavation methods become more expensive, and construction works become more prone to surprises, delays, and damages. To keep utilities performing, minimize disruption, and limit excavation damage, municipalities like Gemeente Amsterdam, want to organize their subsurface better. They already are improving the (3D) registers of their underground infrastructures, but further want to understand how design tools can support layout planning. Their goal is to exploit design algorithms to achieve this.

Develop an algorithm that automates the design of street cross-section layouts for utility construction projects.

During this project, you work with a supervision team of Dr. Farid Vahdatikhaki and Dr. Léon olde Scholtenhuis (UT) and Gemeente Amsterdam (Marco Scheffers) to gain knowledge about design principles for utility engineering, identify design objectives, and algorithms for multi-utility placement, and validate this on realistic cases.