Abstract: The reduction of CO2 emissions is from the technical and ecological perspective currently all over the world one of the major challenges. In that context the question arises, what we can do from the civil engineering side, to reduce the CO2 emissions during construction and during operation of our buildings. There are - for example - the following possibilities, especially in the area of the foundation of high-rise buildings:

i) intelligent and optimized application of deep foundations (pile groups) by taking into account the interaction between raft (pile cap) and piles and designing a Combined Pile-Raft Foundation (CPRF).
ii) science-based and thorough analysis, evaluation and interpretation of large scale pile-load tests.
iii) using piles as energy-piles, which means, that the piles of a deep foundation are used twice: as construction element, carrying the load into the ground, and as heat exchanger, using the thermal capacity of the soil.

All these aspects are described in the Keynote Lecture, starting with the description of the environmentally friendly Combined Pile-Raft Foundation (CPRF) as innovative and CO2-minimized foundation technology.

By application of the CPRF it is possible to reduce the CO2 emission of the construction of the deep foundation significantly; in addition, we save a lot of money and a lot of time by using the CPRF technology and can use the piles as energy piles.

For practitioners the essentials of “ISSMGE Combined Pile-Raft Foundation Guideline” are presented.

Biography: Professor Dr.-Ing. Rolf Katzenbach is since 1993 Full-Professor of the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and is CEO of his Consulting Office “Ingenieursozietät Professor Dr.-Ing. Katzenbach GmbH”. He is Past-Chairman of TC 212 Deep Foundations and of TC 215 Environmental Geotechnics of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE) and Board Member of several other international and national organizations.

He is member of the Chamber of Engineers and publicly certified official Expert of Geotechnics and Independent Checking Engineer working with his expertise for national and international courts of justice, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC, Paris) arbitration committees, insurance companies, state ministries, building authorities and big national and international financial institutions and investors.

Professor Katzenbach is involved in a lot of national and international projects, regarding value engineering and the safety and serviceability of buildings and structures.

Due to his outstanding expertise and knowledge Professor Katzenbach was for example appointed by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) Singapore to carry out the independent Peer Review for the new Metro Line DTL3 in Singapore.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia appointed Professor Katzenbach as an internationally recognized expert to check the safety of the foundation of the 1,007 m high Jeddah Tower (former name: Kingdom Tower) in Jeddah which will become the highest high-rise building of the world.