Characterization of soil at Marine Park in Singapore

Abstract

In a space-constraint country like Singapore, land reclamation serves to expand the limited land area seaward by adding materials like rocks, soil and cement to surrounding water bodies. Singapore’s land area has expanded significantly from 581km2 in 1960 to 633km2 within the next three decades (Centre for Liveable Cities, 2018). The first reclamation project was done in the 1800s at Telok Ayer and reclamation has been on-going till now to create more lands to meet the land demand by the increasing population. In the past, land reclamation is done using sand as the predominant materials. Due to the global shortage and restriction in imported supply of required river and beach sand, Singapore has switched to the Netherlands method of using dyke to surround the area around Singapore and pumped the land dry to create polders (The Straits Times, 2019). he soil condition in the reclaimed area is unknown as the land is reclaimed. The objective of the research is to determine the soil condition in the seabed and check its suitability for the construction of offshore buildings or underground structures, by using soil samples obtained in the seabed near the Marine Park. In the project, the geology and the strength of the soil will be examined to understand the in-situ soil condition.