ABSTRACT
The city of Bucaramanga is located in the northeastern zone of Colombia. It has 1.1 million inhabitants and a growing economy that has generated the migration of approximately 80,000 people in extreme poverty, with a non-urban planning in its north zone. This area presents a potential risk of mass movements due to saturation of residual and conglomerate soils and to high seismic activity. This article presents the design of three drainage tunnels of 1.1 km with a cross-section of 7 m² each and twenty shafts for groundwater collection from 26 m to 63 m in depth, as the optimal evaluated solution in terms of the greatest economy and sustainability and the lowest socio-environmental and constructive impact. Having as fundamentals challenges the combination of the physical space, the tunnel’s portals and the presence of a nearby river in a dense urban area, finite element programs were used for this purpose.
