THE NETHERLANDS WITHOUT ENGINEERING GEOLOGY - NO LANDS

Through the ages, The Netherlands have been struggling with encroachin g water, both from the sea, from rivers and from the ground. The weste rn part of the country, where the majority of the population is living , is situated almost entirely below sea level. Without the protection of dunes and sea dikes in the west, without the river dikes in the cen tre and the east, and without constant pumping, Holland would drown im mediately. Because large parts of the country are composed of a thick succession of unconsolidated younger Quaternary (Holocene) deposits, a lmost all constructions have to be built on a foundation of piles driv en down to firm Pleistocene sands to support them. These exceptional g eographical, hydrological and geological conditions have prompted exte nsive studies in soil-mechanical engineering, and have generated speci al surveying techniques and special geological mapping techniques in a reas where natural outcrops do not occur. In a densely populated and l ow-lying country with soft deposits, maintenance of the coastal defenc e system and foundation instability are major problems which can be mi tigated by a sound knowledge of engineering geology. Some projects int ended to focus attention on and to promote engineering geology in The Netherlands are described in the last section of this paper.