Shimla: Frequent landslides and ground settlement in rainy seasons are a common reoccurrence in hilly regions. It incurs huge financial as well as life losses. Recently landslide at Nigulsari in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh resulted in the deaths of over 25 people.

Lack of the necessary support system, slope protection with the latest technology has led to these disasters, locals have started protesting against the construction of major infrastructures and forcing the administration to stop ongoing developmental projects, which is one of the big reasons for the man-made disasters if unattended.

Major infrastructure development is taking place across the country in order to improve vehicular connectivity, transportation, generation of electricity, etc. These construction projects are forcing to carry out frequent excavation in fragile geology thus resulting in exposure of loose strata, erosion, slope failure, and more leading to disastrous issues such as landslide, settlement of roads, foundation failures, tunnel collapse; worsening the situation in upper hills. This is generally due to the lack of appropriate solutions, technology, and appropriate implementation.

With the right planning and technology, challenges like landslides and slope failures, settlement, etc can be checked. Water ingress, cavities, and erosion are the major reason behind these disastrous issues. All India Megastructures (AIM) has come up with numerous solutions and technology to consolidate the uncompacted and loose ground masses by injection grouting of specialized products thus effectively ceasing water ingress, ground settlements, and landslides.

“Uncontrolled and unattended water is the biggest hurdle in any megastructure project as it erodes the loose soil masses beneath the surface and creates uncompacted shear zones and cavities due to which settlement or landslides takes place in the first place. Groundwater ingress and weak masses inside the strata can be handled by consolidation grouting,” Chetan Gupta an Engineer by profession and founder of AIM said and further added

“Poor and unstable ground can be improved by filling discontinuities with grout material which has sufficient strength and adhesion, to strengthen weak zones encountered during the excavation of underground structures.”

Chetan further suggested that to reduce the quantity of water inrush to avoid serious damages, the informationized grouting technology is adopted in which Chemical grouting transforms granular soils into sandstone-like masses by filling the voids with low viscosity, non-particulate grout after which loose masses acts as a uniform mass to avoid degradation and sudden collapse. The type of excavation and the lining concept and related possibilities for the grouting works affects the successful and economic excavation of tunnels within the water-bearing ground.

AIM develops quality products that improve infrastructure constructions and are flexible in altering the composition of its products to suit the site conditions for best results and outputs. This technology has received very little attention and is almost completely undocumented in the professional literature. AIM makes an attempt to fill some of this information and technology gap so that any disaster can be prevented from happening.