 Worldwide, the overall volume of the underground spaces required for the development of urban infrastructures is expected to double every ten years. The underground has always been a physical space populated with myths, suggestions, and emotions. Mankind has known it as shelter and dwelling, as quarry and mine, as spring and energy, as treasures’ keeper. But in the last two centuries a different perception of the underground as physical space has developed. In parallel to the economical development, the growth in the exploitation of the underground has been striking: for mines, transportation, waterways, railway, power lines, sewers, repositories, functions of social life. For more than half century a modern return to ”caves” has been ongoing. The growing competition for surface space and sustainable development considerations brought recently to think of underground as a true “ore” of social structures and functions, as a new dimension of territory.
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The underground provides space for activities or infrastructures which are impossible, difficult, undesirable or expensive to install on surface.
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The underground provides thermal, mechanical and acoustic protection with related energy savings.
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Locating certain activities underground protects surface environment from risks and disturbances.
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Underground is not transparent: a buried structure is only visible where it outcrops.
For GEODATA the perspective of looking at the surface from the underground becomes concrete in reason of our capacity to conceive, design and manage the construction of large underground infrastructures.
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