Overview

Engineering geology deals with geologic phenomena that are relevant in the context of civil engineering construction, public safety, and aspects of natural resource recovery. Engineering geologists combine special training with practical experience in order to provide civil engineers, land-use planners, and public policy makers with quantitative geologic information and recommendations, together with qualitative assessments of development opportunities and constraints.

Engineering geology is imperative for ensuring that geologic factors affecting the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of construction works are adequately recognized, interpreted, and presented for use in engineering practice.  Engineering geologists, in cooperation with civil engineers, bear an important responsibility for determining the extent to which geology impacts the execution of engineering works, and for assessing the potential for geological processes to adversely impact public health, safety, and welfare.

Engineering geology at TU Graz benefits from strong collaboration with the institutes of Soil Mechanics, Foundation Engineering and Computational Geotechnics and Rock Mechanics and Tunneling. Formally, this collaboration is referred to as the Geotechnical Group Graz (GGG), founded to facilitate synergistic activities between these closely related (though traditionally distinct) disciplines.