HOT CITY | 2021

WHAT IS THE INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE ON THE CREEPING DEFORMATIONS OF SOILS AND GEOTECHNICAL STRUCTURES?

The shallow subsurface beneath many urban areas worldwide is warming up – a phenomenon widely known as subsurface urban heat islands. Subsurface urban heat islands represent an underground climate change that is increasingly affecting most urban areas worldwide, with multiple detrimental impacts that span from environmental to public health and transportation infrastructure issues.

This subsurface warming is caused by massive amounts of waste heat continuously rejected into the ground by buildings, infrastructures, and underground transport, as well as by heat that diffuses in the ground from the atmosphere. As the deformation of soils and geotechnical structures is critically affected by temperature variations, subsurface heat islands represent a silent hazard for urban areas.

This project aims to investigate the impact of continuous thermal loading due to subsurface heat islands on the long-term deformation of fine-grained soils and geotechnical structures. To this aim, the project will fill the gaps in the current scientific understanding of this problem by developing an integrated set of experimental and theoretical investigations. These activities will leverage a unique sensing network that monitors temperature in the subsurface of Chicago and advanced laboratory experiments to formulate and validate physics-based and data-driven modeling tools. The ultimate goal of these investigations is to shed light on the fundamental scientific problem of creeping deformations of soils and geotechnical structures in the context of prolonged temperature rises – one that has many practical implications, even beyond the scope of subsurface urban heat islands.

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Project team


Alessandro F. Rotta Loria
Associate Professor
Anjali Thota
Ph.D. Student		  

Project team


Alessandro F. Rotta Loria
Associate Professor
Anjali Thota
Ph.D. Student

Journal publications

→ Chu, Z. and Rotta Loria, A. F. (2024) Modeling underground climate change across a city based on data about a building block. Sustainable Cities and Society. 114(1): 105775.
→ Rotta Loria, A. F. (2023) The silent impacts of underground climate change on civil infrastructure. Communications Engineering. 44(2): 1–12. Article featured by NYT, SciAm, WaPo, NPR, Bloomberg, Forbes, and CNN, among others; Global audience reach: 41.3M people.
→ Rotta Loria, A. F., Thota, A., Thomas, A. M., Friedle, N., Lautenberg, J. M. and Song, E. C. (2022) Subsurface heat island across the Chicago Loop District: Analysis of localized drivers. Urban Climate. 44: 101211.