Three-dimensional geostatistical modeling of subsurface stratification and SPT-N Value at dam site in South Korea

The 3D geospatial modeling of geotechnical information can aid in understanding the geotechnical characteristic values of the continuous subsurface at construction sites. In this study, a geostatistical optimization model for the three-dimensional (3D) mapping of subsurface stratification and the SPT-N value based on a trial-and-error rule was developed and applied to a dam emergency spillway site in South Korea. Geospatial database development for a geotechnical investigation, reconstitution of the target grid volume, and detection of outliers in the borehole dataset were implemented prior to the 3D modeling. For the site-specific subsurface stratification of the engineering geo-layer, we developed an integration method for the borehole and geophysical survey datasets based on the geostatistical optimization procedure of ordinary kriging and sequential Gaussian simulation (SGS) by comparing their cross-validation-based prediction residuals. We also developed an optimization technique based on SGS for estimating the 3D geometry of the SPT-N value. This method involves quantitatively testing the reliability of SGS and selecting the realizations with a high estimation accuracy. Boring tests were performed for validation, and the proposed method yielded more accurate prediction results and reproduced the spatial distribution of geotechnical information more effectively than the conventional geostatistical approach.