The COST C7 Action 'Soil Structure Interaction in Urban Civil Engineering' had as its aim the exchange of geotechnical experiences between universities and civil engineering practice throughout Europe and the preparation of recommendations for future urban planning and for the participating architects and civil engineers. The contribution of the BBW serves the purpose of supporting financially the involvement of Switzerland in this action. The research project was directed by the Institute of Geotechnical Engineering at the ETH Zurich. The project partners were the firms Solexpert, Schwerzenbach and RSE, Zurich. The Swiss contributions, besides active participation in the conferences and the working groups and the organisation of the final conference in March 2002 in Zurich, consisted of the preparation of a state-of-the-art report on the planning and control of urban geotechnical measures and urban tunnelling in ground water and the evaluation of case studies. The results of the action are given in the proceedings of the final conference (ISBN 3-00-009169-6). Each of the working groups will publish a handbook with the experiences and recommendations for urban planners, architects and civil engineers. The handbook 'Hidden Aspects of Urban Planning' (Telford-Publishers, London, ISBN 07277-3101-7) of Working Group D has already been published.The action showed that in urban planning strategies geotechnical aspects and relevant information have to be taken into account early, in order to avoid damage and reduce costs. Project data should be stored systematically in databases and prepared in a suitable form for future planning. In the education of architects and civil engineers an awareness of the problem of soil-structure interaction should be awakened more than has been the case in the past. Finally, it is to be expected that the sustainable use of underground space in the future will become of great economic importance, which will require a corresponding research and development effort. The further activities and results of the COST C 7 Action can be referred to in
http://www.bygg.ntnu.no/geo/costc7/web00/.
