A shored reinforced soil embankment solution for a North Indian railway project has won the GeoAsia8 conference Corporate Case Study competition.

Italian multinational Maccaferri worked on the challenging terrain of the Jammu-Baramulla railway line in the Jammu-Kashmir area of India, a rugged area vulnerable to soil erosion and earthquakes.

The project focused on a 54km section of the 324km route, involving massive
earthworks and extensive construction of tunnels, bridges and embankments to create reinforced soil embankments with steeper slopes to minimize land use and topographic changes while preserving natural drainage.

The approach also aimed to minimize the environmental impact. This included reusing 300,000m3 of tunnel muck created during excavations as structural fill, encouraging biodiversity with the use of green fascia mesh to support the growth of natural vegetation, and energy savings by reducing carbon emissions by up to 80% and overall costs by up to 30%.

Five IGS Corporate Members competed for the win at the 8th Asian Conference on Geosynthetics (GeoAsia8) in Brisbane, Australia, on June 10-13, this year. Projects had to be from the IGS Asia region and carried out between April 1, 2022, to April 30, 2025.

Maccafferri's regional win will now go forward to compete in the International Final Competition during the 13th International Conference on Geosynthetics (13ICG) in Montreal, Canada in 2026. It will join HUESKER's Interstate 95 roadway repair case study, which won the IGS Americas region competition last year. IGS Europe's winner will be decided at EuroGeo8 in September, this year.