A numerical model to estimate locally available suitable soil for light earth building using pedological databases

This work aims at evaluating spatially the availability of suitable earth resource for light earth building. A suitable earth material for a raw earth building technique can be defined as an earth whose properties (composition, mechanical properties, etc.) enables to reach the desired building performance of the earthen building element. The functional building element performances, such as its mechanical strength parameters or sometimes hygrothermal performances, are often considered by the scientific community when dealing with soil suitability for raw earth building. Yet usually, when masons evaluate an earth material suitability, they consider its suitability for the stages of the building process, including its excavation, preparation and implementation. Indeed, these stages also introduce constraints on the composition or mechanical properties of the earth material, that often depends on the building techniques employed or mechanization intensity. Therefore, in collaboration with expert craftsmen, suitability properties are identified all along the earth material life cycle in raw earth building. Then, the defined suitability thresholds are applied to a pedological database (DoneSol3 Brittany) to define suitable/non-suitable soil entities. Finally, the pedological spatial units suitability is mapped. Also, the total amount of suitable soil, the suitable soil percentage, and the annual amount of suitable excavated earth are estimated for Brittany territory. A sensitivity analysis is performed to understand the result’s potential variability. This dataset is composed of the python code files that were written to : - extract soil data from the DoneSol3 pedologic database - transform this data by applying suitability thresholds on it - calculates pedologic data suitability - performs a sensitivity analysis on this suitability result - extracts results in a format that allows it to be used in a mapping software such as QGIS For more details see the README file. Note : in order to reproduce the results obtained for light earth in Brittany (see linked publication), some files must be obtained : - DoneSol3 Bretagne database (A convention can be set with AgroCampusOuest, contact : [e-mail]) - The suitability thresholds. The reasons of their concealment are explained in the linked publication. These can be provided by the authors on demand.