2.

State of the art in evaluation of hydrogeological impacts of tunnel

construction
As suggested above, one of the main hydrogeological impacts induced by tunnel excavation is
the drainage of groundwater through the tunnel and, consequently, the drawdown of the water
table of the affected aquifer. Scientific literature provides several analytical procedures to obtain
the discharge rate through a tunnel: Goodman et al. (1965) suggest an analytical procedure that
allows for the calculation of the steady discharge rate per unit length of the tunnel. The formula
obtained by Jacob and Lohman (1952) is more suitable for confined aquifers in a transient state.
Perrochet (2005) developed an analytical solution to estimate the discharge rate in a tunnel
during the progress of the excavation. Numerical methods are also available for this purpose
(Molinero et al., 2002). Drawdown due to tunnel excavation can be calculated analytically (Bear
et al., 1968; Custodio, 1983). However, fractured bedrocks rarely match the hypothesis required
for the application of such simple analytical models. Consequently, more sophisticated
hydrogeological models are needed in order to obtain an acceptable accuracy in such media.
According to Berkowitz (1994), the groundwater flow into fractured rock media can be studied
using numerical models by means of three different approaches: continuous models that consider
the whole fractured media as an equivalent porous medium; discrete fracture network models
that restrict the flow within a finite set of connected fractures; and hybrid models that consider
the most important fractures within equivalent porous domains (Yang et al., 2009). When the
difficulty in defining the geometry of fracture networks and the limited data do not allow for a
correct characterization of such heterogeneous media, it becomes necessary to find simpler ways
to represent the aquifer. Statistical methods can be used to find correlations between baseline
data and independent control variables (precipitation and flow rates in non-affected streams).
Finding such correlations allows for the characterization of the unaltered state of an aquifer and
for the prediction of flow rates and water table following tunnel construction (Attanayake and
Waterman, 2006), which in turn allows for the identification of potential environmental impacts.
Similarly, the methodology proposed in this paper uses a physicallybased hydrological model to
characterize and predict the behavior of the aquifer. A tool for the simultaneous modeling of
daily water balances in edaphic soil, vadose zone and aquifer that takes into account the main
water flow processes taking place in underground media is used. Such a tool provides more
robust predictions. The behavior of an aquifer depends on two factors: (1) the existing
hydrometerological conditions (precipitation, evapotranspiration, etc.), and (2) the characteristic
parameters that define underground media. Whereas the hydrometeorological conditions are
variable and can be measured at meteorological stations, the parameters that define underground
media are fairly constant and can be measured or estimated by means of experiments or
calibrated during the modeling process. The collection of field data allows for a proper
calibration of the characteristic parameters of underground media by fitting the computed water
table and discharge for long time series of the measured variables. In addition, these two
variables can be measured in field campaigns, gauging the discharge of the rivers that drain the
basin and measuring the head at wells and boreholes. Once the parameters of the model have
been calibrated, the values of water table and discharge can be calculated as a sole function of
meteorological data. Tunnel excavation causes an impact on groundwater due to the change in
water flow patterns and the drainage of the aquifer. The impact of tunnel excavation causes a
change in the natural behavior of the aquifer in the form of a marked drawdown of the water
table and a decrease in the water supplied to rivers and streams. As a result, changes are
observed in certain parameters governing groundwater flow, and the computed results no longer
match the measured values of water table and flow discharge. From this moment, the calibrated
model predicts the behavior of the aquifer under unaltered conditions, i.e., before the excavation
of the tunnel. The departure of computed values from actual measurements gives a quantitative
estimation of the impact that can be attributed to the construction of the tunnel (Figure 1). Such
estimation allows for the distinction between the drawdown induced by the drainage of the
aquifer and the natural oscillation of the water table. Based on water balance calculations under
unaltered conditions, a new model that reproduces the hydrogeological behavior after the impact
of the tunnel can be developed by changing only the characteristic parameters of underground
media (i.e., interflow, percolation and aquifer decay coefficients). A comparison of both

Fig. 1. Schematic description of the methodology for quantitative evaluation of tunnel impact using water
budget models.
Fig. 2. Main components of water budget considered in the Visual Balan software
(Samper et al., 1999a).

models allows for the quantitative evaluation of the changes in groundwater flow and the
variation in the amount of water corresponding to each component of the model.