Nature-Inspired Solutions for Built Environment (NISE-2024)

A collection of original articles, reviews, and extended abstracts is edited and presented across four thematic chapters to highlight the latest advances in nature-inspired ground engineering solutions. While the primary focus is on Northern Cyprus, the contributions have global relevance and reflect ground engineering’s growing alignment with natural systems. In a world where the built environment increasingly disrupts the biological, chemical, and mechanical equilibrium of the ground beneath us, it is necessary to witness a shift in paradigm, one that reimagines our material choices, methods, and models. This shift is articulated clearly in the vision offered by the NiSE (Nature-inspired Solutions for Built Environment) working party and its framework (Cetin et al. 2024; Assadi-Langroudi et al. 2023; Assadi-Langroudi et al. 2022), and provides both a critique of traditional engineering practice and a roadmap for its reinvention.

The ground, as NiSE reminds us, is not merely a foundation to be stabilised and built upon. It is a living integrated system composed of fractal, adaptive, self-forming, and self-healing systems. Nature’s strategies for resilience and renewal offer a vast lexicon of ideas for modern engineering. Whether through the calcite-precipitating activity of soil bacteria, the pozzolanic reactivity of wood ash, the fibrous integrity of recycled dog hair used as reinforcement, or the emerging understanding of rocking isolation and partially drained soil behaviour, the papers in this booklet reveal an inspiring breadth of nature-inspired thinking.

With the closing of NiSE3, it has become clear that the research around biomimetics fit broadly into four thematic categories:

(1) Materials—cementitious and polymeric phases;
(2) Physical Modelling;
(3) Numerical Modelling and Systems Thinking;
(4) Sustainability and Implementation Barriers.

Each of these themes contributes to the overarching goal of a more regenerative, responsive, and responsible ground engineering practice.

Over the course of the 3rd NiSE conference, some important reflections emerged. Scale matters, and the disparity between the challenges faced at the field scale and the solutions developed at laboratory scale remains an evident concern. While the development of alternative binders and cementing agents has attracted an energetic cohort of younger researchers, their translation to real-world settings raises open questions: How can these materials be reliably applied to base soils in situ? Can we expect the same performance in the field as under tightly controlled lab conditions? What are the wider ecological and environmental risks, both immediate and long-term, posed by such additives? The durability and biodegradability of polymerisation products, in particular, remains to be thoroughly investigated.

The concept of soil health featured heavily in discussion, yet one is left wondering what defines soil health? What measures it? How do we balance biological function with mechanical performance in our engineering interventions?

Moreover, when it comes to materials, questions around procurement, including supply security, cost, and stakeholder acceptance, are increasingly pertinent. Some alternative additives (e.g., shredded tyres) offer attractive technical benefits but may be met with resistance from communities or regulators concerned with health and environmental consequences. For nature-inspired engineering to thrive, ground engineers must collaborate closely with ecologists, human scientists, and supply chain experts, to ensure that materials are not only functional, but also socially and environmentally acceptable.

To help bridge the scale gap, the incorporation of advanced physical modelling, IoT-enabled monitoring, meso-scale experimental tools, and machine learning-driven decision systems are vital. These tools are crucial in translating the laboratory research into durable, scalable, and workable ground solutions.

The contributions in this collection do more than report findings. They reflect an emerging ethos and represent a community that sees the value of working with nature, not against it. The collection stands as a testament to the idea that innovation, when rooted in the intelligence of natural systems, can be not only resilient but also regenerative. As you read through the pages of this collection, you will be inspired to build in ways that honour the ground’s innate wisdom and in ways that leave it better, not worse, for future generations.

This conference proceeding is published as a special issue in Sustainable Structures and Materials.