
Nicole MetjeUniversity of Birmingham · Department of Civil Engineering
Nicole Metje
Diplom Engineer, PhD
About
157
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Introduction
Nicole Metje currently works at the School of Engineering within the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Birmingham. Nicole does research in Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering and Remote Sensing. Her passion is to work across disciplines as is exemplified by her collaborations in 'Quantum Technology' where she leads the work on using QT gravity sensor for civil engineering applications.
Additional affiliations
Education
October 1993 - April 1998
Publications
Publications (157)
The advancement of urbanisation in large cities yields an increased use of piles to support high-rise buildings and critical infrastructure. Compared to bored piles, the impact on existing buried assets and infrastructure including tunnels is often more pronounced for driven pile construction. However, the evolution of the deformation of segmental...
Population growth and increase in urbanisation contribute to an increased use of underground space. Consequently, new tunnel alignments are often situated near existing piled foundations. Thus, evaluating the induced forces and displacement in the piles caused by ground movements due to tunnelling must be considered. This study focused on assessing...
Forest preservation and management are paramount for sustainable mitigation of climate change, timber production, and the economy. However, the potential of trees and forests to provide these benefits to the ecosystem is hampered by natural phenomena such as windthrow and anthropogenic activities. The aim of the current research was to undertake a...
Shale anisotropy characteristics have great effects on the mechanical behaviour of the rock. Understanding shale anisotropic behaviour is one of the key interests to several geo-engineering fields, including tunnel, nuclear waste disposal and hydraulic fracturing. This research adopted the finite discrete element method (FDEM) to create anisotropic...
The road surfacing material is continuously exposed to both traffic and climate stresses, including extreme temperatures and heavy rainfalls. Subsequently, most road defects start from the surface and potentially develop into road structural damage. Appropriate road maintenance schemes are necessary to ensure the surface remains functionable. On th...
Purpose
Wireless sensor networks (WSN), as a solution for buried water pipe monitoring, face a new set of challenges compared to traditional application for above-ground infrastructure monitoring. One of the main challenges for underground WSN deployment is the limited range (less than 3 m) at which reliable wireless underground communication can b...
Integral Abutment Bridges (IABs) are increasingly popular due to their reduced maintenance cost compared to traditional bridges with expansion joints. However, the widespread construction of IABs is currently limited by design code prescriptions resulting from the significant uncertainties associated with how the backfill interacts with the (integr...
Contrasts in electromagnetic properties between the target feature and surrounding soil are of importance for detection of archaeological features with Ground Penetrating Radar. These vary because of changing climatic conditions and soil type and are currently poorly understood. Long‐term in situ monitoring of apparent relative dielectric permittiv...
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have emerged as a robust and cost-effective solution for buried pipeline monitoring due to the low cost (a maximum of a few tens of UK pounds (GBP)), low power supply capacity (in the order of 1 watt/hour) and small size (centimetre scale) requirements of the wireless sensor nodes. One of the main challenges for WSN d...
Wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs) using wirelessly-connected buried sensors enable smart agriculture through real-time soil sensing, timely decision-making, and precise remote operation. Energy harvesting technology is adopted in WUSNs, implying wireless-powered underground sensor networks (WPUSNs), to prolong the network lifetime. In ad...
This paper examines the role of pipe deterioration prediction approaches for optimizing maintenance, repair, and rehabilitation of buried water supply, wastewater collection, and drainage networks. It is appreciated that there are other ancillary assets within water supply and wastewater collection and drainage networks, but these were not consider...
This study focuses on the investigation of the factors that have limited, so far, the development of a consistent design and assessment approach for integral bridges (IBs). This paper presents a review of previous research and current design practices for IBs, followed by an overview of monitoring studies in the laboratory and in the field. As part...
The extraordinary performance offered by cold atom-based clocks and sensors has the opportunity to profoundly affect a range of applications, for example in gravity surveys, enabling long term monitoring applications through low drift measurements. While ground-based devices are already starting to enter the commercial market, significant improveme...
The sensing of gravity has emerged as a tool in geophysics applications such as engineering and climate research1–3, including the monitoring of temporal variations in aquifers4 and geodesy5. However, it is impractical to use gravity cartography to resolve metre-scale underground features because of the long measurement times needed for the removal...
This study focuses on the investigation of the factors that have limited, so far, the development of a consistent design and assessment approach for integral bridges (IBs). This paper presents review of previous research and current design practices for IBs, followed by an overview of monitoring studies in the laboratory and in the field. As part o...
Microgravity surveying is a widely used geophysical method, especially for detection of deeper features which are difficult to detect with other techniques. However, the accuracy of the readings is strongly affected by the amount of microseism noise, which is typically rejected by using long integration times for each measurement cycle. Large seism...
The sensing of gravity has emerged as an important tool in geophysics for applications such as engineering and climate research, where it provides the capability to probe otherwise inaccessible features under the surface of the Earth. Examples include the monitoring of temporal variations such as those found in aquifers and geodesy. However, resolv...
Buried infrastructure forms the backbone for economic stability, growth, competitiveness and productivity in modern society and is a critical element of urban environments. The pressures on buried infrastructure will only increase as the population increases, which will drive demand and require changes. This means that the maintenance of existing b...
Road condition assessment plays an important role in maintaining the integrity of mature and fast-expanding road networks. Such assessments provide invaluable information for local authorities that enable them to deliver timely preventative road network maintenance. To enable the best use of scarce maintenance resources, it is necessary to assess t...
The role of the urban subsurface for cities has long been disregarded but is recently getting more attention. To capture it, the city’s geographical and geological setup, its history and the social context it is located within are of particular relevance. As a case study, this paper illustrates the context and governance of London’s subsurface thro...
The ever-growing urban population faces challenges of ageing infrastructure. The process for renewing the infrastructure is costly, and current practices for maintaining and repairing are often ineffective and labour intensive. Road networks, for instance, which act as the arteries for cities, suffer from reoccurring potholes (in the UK, a pothole...
A critical assessment criterion for road condition assessment is the amount and severity of cracking. Cracking causes a loss of structural capacity (i.e. strength and stiffness) and if severe can cause water infiltration into the subbase and subgrade, potentially leading to more serious structural failure. The onset of cracking therefore accelerate...
In most countries local roads (i.e., urban and rural) form over 80% of the entire road network and constitute the country’s largest asset value. In order for local roads to remain fit for purpose and maintain their value, they require periodic maintenance. To make the best use of scarce maintenance resources, road maintenance needs to be preventati...
The rapidly increasing traffic volumes using local
road networks allied to the implications of climate change
drive the demand for cost-effective, reliable and accurate road
condition assessment. A particular concern for local road asset
managers is the loss of material from the road surface known
as fretting which unchecked can lead to potholes. I...
The accurate modelling of gravity is of crucial importance for a variety of issues including, but not restricted to, the identification of buried objects. Gravity is an unbounded problem which causes challenges when applying numerical models, i.e., it results in computational difficulties when specifying the relevant boundary conditions. In order t...
Many of the major challenges to a flourishing and pervasive trenchless industry are acutely associated with the complex urban context in which the works are carried out. The first, and most often quoted, challenge, is knowing where the current buried infrastructure is situated, and consequently 'seeing below the ground' to detect, locate and map ex...
It has been stated that we are less in need of novel construction technologies than we are of novel business models. This paper argues that this truism is especially relevant to the trenchless technology industry – there is a remarkably comprehensive range of trenchless technologies that could be applied in urban settings to minimise the short-term...
Grouted connections for offshore wind turbines are formed by attaching overlapping steel piles with an ultra-high strength cementitious grout. The structural performance of grouted connections is critical for the substructures in order to exhibit sufficient resistance to environmental loads. The long-term integrity of the grout core can be compromi...
Natural density variations in the near surface soil (i.e. the top 5 m) cause variations in the values recorded by geophysical surveys undertaken with gravity instruments. Whilst this ‘soil noise’ is too small to be noticeable with current instruments (e.g. Scintrex CG-5 and CG-6), the future use of more accurate instruments such as quantum technolo...
Gravity forward modelling is the calculation of gravity field from a specific density distribution, and is essential for reconstructing ground density in an inversion process. Finite element (FE) methods have been effectively used for forward modelling of gravity data. In contrast to the closed-form and analytical methods, FEM can model complicated...
Buried utilities (e.g. gas, water, electricity, drainage), many installed decades ago, are vital urban support systems.
Their locations are often not well documented, yet accurate location greatly helps replacement, rehabilitation and
maintenance of existing services and is crucial for installation of new utilities: it minimises utility strikes / t...
The necessity to recognize the subsurface or underground and all its current and potential uses as part of our urban environment, to integrate this into urban planning and governance, and to foster conscious allocation of subsurface space has been increasingly recognized over the last century. At the same time, systems thinking as a ‘buzz-word’ has...
The installed capacity of offshore wind turbines (OWTs) has rapidly grown during the past decades around the globe. Monopiles are the most common substructure employed in the majority of the current operating OWTs. A monopile is usually formed by tubular steel tubes which are connected in-situ by means of an ultra-high strength grout. Monopiles dif...
Grouted Connections (GCs) are vital structural components of Offshore Wind Turbine (OWT) substructures. On monopiles to achieve a GC, tubular hollow steel piles are in-situ attached with a high-strength grout. Monopiles are susceptible to large magnitude bending loads in offshore environments. Recently, following inspections the performance of GCs...
How to manage the limited underground space available or accessible in urban and rural areas has been increasingly discussed and investigated in recent years. Proposed frameworks and methods supporting holistic management of the subsurface aim to describe and evaluate current and potential future functions and suggest strategies for the development...
The invention of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) technology has facilitated the possibility of detecting buried utilities and has been used primarily in civil engineering for detecting structural defects, such as voids and cavities in road pavements, slabs and bridge decks, but has not been used to assess the condition of buried pipes. Pipe deterior...
The performance of geotechnical assets is influenced by various external factors including time and changing loading and environmental conditions. These changes could reduce the asset’s ability to maintain its function, potentially resulting in failure, which could be extremely disruptive and expensive to remediate; thus, the ability to monitor the...
Microgravity measurements are a useful tool for detecting subsurface features, especially deep targets or those in conductive ground which lie outside the capabilities of other methods based on electromagnetic signal transmission. However, the method is limited by a range of noise sources including vibrational noise from the environment, one source...
The true (full) cost of a utility strike incident is rarely known. Generally, only the direct costs are used to measure the impact of utility strikes; the wider indirect and social costs are rarely quantified in monetary terms. Moreover, no established methodology exists to address this gap in knowledge, while access to fully documented records oft...
Sub-Surface utility infrastructure plays a crucial role in modern cities and as such, must ensure that it is sustainable so helping urban environments both to be resilient and prosper in the future. A key component of urban infrastructure projects is streetworks operations, which include: placement, installation, upgrading and renewal of utility in...
This paper presents the validation of a novel leak detection method for water distribution pipelines, although it could be applied to any buried pressurized fluid flow pipe. The detection method is based on a relative pressure sensor attached non-invasively to the outside of the pipe combined with temperature difference measurements between the pip...
Utility infrastructure systems, designed well, have a pivotal role to play in improving the sustainability of cities due to their critical functionality in urban environments. Equally, utility streetworks – installation, maintenance and upgrading activities – can adversely impact the local and global economies. The inaccurate location of pipes and...
The publisher regrets that the following error appeared in this paper when it was published online ahead of print and in Engineering Sustainability 172(2): 68-80, https://doi.org/10.1680/jensu.16.00050. In the second sentence of the first paragraph of section 3, SBAT was incorrectly defined as State-Building Assessment Tool; the correct definition...
The accuracy and repeatability of microgravity measurements for surveying purposes are affected by two main sources of noise; instrument noise from the sensor and electronics, and environmental sources of noise from anthropogenic activity, wind, microseismic activity and other sources of vibrational noise. There is little information in the literat...
Time domain reflectometry (TDR) can be used to measure the dry density of compacted soils, although it is believed that TDR could also be used to monitor the long-term performance of aging geotechnical assets. Understanding the deterioration of aging assets (earth dams, embankments) can be problematic; monitoring the relative condition with time ma...
The evolution of cities is directly linked to their subsurface: the local geology and hydrogeology alongside the history of human interventions are the basis for the present structure and organisation of cities and affect the prospects for future developments within and above the ground. The underground serves multiple purposes in cities including;...
The underground utility infrastructure (UUI) will play a crucial role in meeting the demand for creating sustainable and resilient urban developments that are fit for purpose today and in the far future. The utility streetworks operations, an important feature of the UUI system, include placement, maintenance, rehabilitation, renewal and upgrading...
As the global population continues to grow rapidly and move towards a more urban-based settlement, the need for key infrastructure that enables these urban centres to thrive, to become more interconnected and sustainable, also grows at an unprecedented rate. Thus, it is urgent that key stakeholders in cities become aware of the importance of develo...
Electromagnetic wave propagation methods are extensively used in geophysical prospecting, such as in archaeological and utility surveys. The signal penetration and attenuation of electromagnetic waves depend strongly on the apparent permittivity and electrical conductivity of the soil, which vary on a seasonal basis, affecting the detection of buri...
This work, on evaluation of the sustainability impacts of urban utility streetworks, has and is being supported through extensive consultation with a wide range of industry experts, by testing and through the evaluation of the developed framework using a number of case studies and test sites in collaboration with the Assessing The Underworld (ATU)...
Geophysical surveying is widely used for the location of subsurface features. Current technology is limited in terms of its resolution (thus size of features it can detect) and penetration depth and a suitable technique is needed to bridge the gap between shallow near surface investigation using techniques such as EM conductivity mapping and GPR co...
Unlike terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), communication between buried nodes in WUSNs happens through the ground. Due to the complexity of soil, accurate estimation of the underground signal attenuation is challenging. Existing path loss models mainly rely on semi-empirical and empirical mixing models for calculating the dielectric proper...
Open ACCESS paper:
The high precision and scalable technology offered by atom interferometry has the opportunity to profoundly affect gravity surveys, enabling the detection of features of either smaller size or greater depth. While such systems are already starting to enter into the commercial market, significant reductions are required in order t...
Self-Repairing Cities is a £4.2m project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which aims to develop and use advanced Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) technology in street infrastructure maintenance to re-balance the energy, resource and risk. • It is led by the University of Leads with collaboration from th...
This document reports a workshop organised by the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham to rethink the way we design and manage streets and utility services. Its purpose was to explore alternative ways of accommodating movement, utility services and green and blue infrastructures within streets – with their associated busi...
Owing to the rapid rise in global urbanisation and industrialisation, the need to tackle water scarcity, flooding and water quality in urban areas has increased in prominence. Addressing these challenges through inclusion of flood controls in urban planning has given rise to the concepts of Sponge Cities to deal with excess water and harvesting and...
The electromagnetic (EM) soil properties are dynamic variables that can change considerably over short periods, and they fundamentally affect the performance of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). However, long-term field studies are remarkably rare and records of the EM soil properties and their seasonal variation are starkly noticeable by their absen...
Tunnelling provides a robust solution to a variety of engineering challenges. It is a complex process, which requires a firm understanding of the ground conditions as well as structural issues. This book covers the whole range of areas that you need to know in order to embark upon a career in tunnelling. It also includes a number of case studies of...
Tunnelling provides a robust solution to a variety of engineering challenges. It is a complex process, which requires a firm understanding of the ground conditions as well as the importance of ground-structure interaction. This book covers the full range of areas related to tunnel construction required to embark upon a career in tunnelling. It also...
In recent years the topic of urban underground projects and infrastructure networks as well as their contribution to sustainability and resilience of cities has been widely addressed. Major projects deal with questions of interdependencies, mapping and untangling of the existing underground infrastructure web, which constitutes not only a service b...
We address the problem of accurately locating buried utility segments by fusing data from multiple sensors using a novel marching-cross-section (MCS) algorithm. Five types of sensors are used in this work: Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Passive Magnetic Fields (PMF), Magnetic Gradiometer (MG), Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields (LFEM), and Vibro...