During the ACUUS 2023 conference the special session of “A Retrospective “Lessons Learned” Study of Worldwide Underground Facilities” has been taken place, where a number of issues that influence the decisions of developing underground spaces have been addressed.  Surbana Jurong Corporation funded the relevant study about the important lessons learned and along with Prof. R. Sterling that led that research have also issued a relevant book publication.

The idea that many cities and regions of the world are poised to greatly increase their use of underground space and that there are a variety of modern underground facilities around the world that now have several decades of operating experience led to a study conducted by the Surbana Jurong Group over an approximately 18-month period in 2019 and 2020. The study gathered information from 42 underground facilities from 15 different countries worldwide that had an average lifetime of service of approximately 37 years. The study has allowed the collection of the lessons learned and particular emphasis was placed in the study on whether the decision to build underground was still considered the right one, how the architectural design influenced the human acceptance of the underground spaces created and whether the technical aspects of the facility had performed as expected.

The PDF of the summary report (approximately 30 pages) for this project can be accessed for a free download: Lessons Learned Summary Report

The PDF of the full report (nearly 500 pages) can be requested at a cost of USD$168 by emailing to Richard Ting, Senior Principal Engineer, Surbana Jurong Consultants at richard.tingsc@surbanajurong.com.