Geology Map Of Singapore

[Jesper Sahu]

Since its independence in 1965, Singapore has seen unprecedented economic and social growth and is now considered a world leader in education, finance, healthcare, logistics, electronic manufacturing and petroleum refinery. This has been accompanied by physical growth through land reclamation, resulting in a 25 per cent increase in landmass since 1984 and a projected further increase of five per cent by 2030.

These projects have delivered a substantially revised and up-to-date interpretation of the geology, including a new International Commission on Stratigraphy-compliant stratigraphy and structural framework. This work is presented in a series of peer-reviewed journal articles and a 3D geological model of Singapore.

This revised understanding of the geology of has important implications for current and future urban development. The additional complexity identified within the bedrock and superficial geology means that highly variable ground-conditions should be anticipated horizontally and vertically at all scales, and in all geological units. However, a better understanding of possible geometrical arrangements of geological units will also allow for better prediction of the nature and distribution of lithologies, discontinuities, alteration, and groundwater, and therefore of the properties in the subsurface and the potential for geological hazards and resources. Application of this new geological understanding to the engineering of buildings and infrastructure, at all stages of urban development, will result in an overall reduction of both risk and cost.

Dr. Kar Winn is currently working as a sessional lecturer with Newcastle Australia Institute of Higher Education (NAIHE) and a freelance consultant. He is a professional geologist of American Institution of Professional Geologists, a geologist of the Geological Society of London, and a European geologist of the Federation of Geologists, Belgium.

In Myanmar, he worked as an Exploration Geologist with Myanmar Oil Corporation and Myanmar Shell B.V. before moving to Singapore in 1993. He works here in engineering geology, geotechnical engineering, and rock mechanics fields, involving various projects such as geotechnical site investigation and instrumentation, underground rock cavern excavation, cut-and-cover excavation and tunnelling works, rock slope stability analysis, etc.

Dr. Yeo Chong Hun teaches vector calculus, differential equations, numerical methods, linear algebra, ground improvement, soil behaviour and finite element method. His research background include tunnel heading stability, ground shock, liquefaction and deep mixing. He has extensive experience in soil tests, field instrumentation, physical modelling and numerical modelling. He is a technical assessor in the fields of soil tests, rock tests and pile tests. In the area of teaching, he is designing applied methods in the teaching and learning of engineering mathematics. His present research interest is in advanced soil tests and geotechnical model tests.

Mr. Paul has a strong technical background, which he has developed further at Arup since joining the organisation more than 13 years ago. He currently works as an Associate at Arup Singapore and is involved in several ongoing major infrastructure projects throughout the region. He has significant experience in the planning, design, and analysis of tunnelling work, particularly using FE programmes such as FLAC, UDEC, and Plaxis.

Mr. Jeyatharan obtained his Bachelor of Science from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. He has worked with few consultants designing major infrastructure for about 10 years before moving to Land Transport Authority to plan and manage designs of major infrastructure projects. He has over 30 years of geotechnical and tunnel engineering experience and has been involved in the design aspects of several road and rail infrastructure projects in Singapore, including site investigations and testing, geotechnical interpretation, earth retaining structures, tunnels, foundations, instrumentation and monitoring and ground improvement. He conducts technical studies on topics such as geotechnical interpretations of deep excavation and tunnelling works etc. and shares his findings regularly in local conferences and seminars.

Dr. Leo has been involved in major infrastructure projects in Singapore, Southeast Asia, and Australasia. He is a result-oriented and goals-driven engineer with more than 15 years of professional experience encompassing analysis, modelling, design, management, research and development, and tendering and procurement, with excellent foresight and the ability to plan ahead.

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All underground and other geological information that will benefit both private and public sector efforts in underground development has now been collated, and a subterranean land rights and valuation framework is being developed. The British Geological Survey (BGS) has been working with the Geological and Underground Projects Department in of the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) since 2012 to deliver this modern geological knowledge-base. This article tells the story (so far!) of the fascinating geology emerging from beneath the Asian Tiger City.

Picture: BGS has worked with BCA to revise the current stratigraphy of Singapore. The lithostratigraphical units of the new proposed stratigraphy framework have been developed to be consistent with International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) recommendations. Simplified Geological Map After Gillespie et al. (2014) and Goodenough et al. (2014)

Singapore presently comprises 63 separate islands; some of these reclamation projects involve merging smaller islands to form larger, more functional islands (as has been done with Jurong Island in the south west). In still more ambitious plans, the subsurface is seen as an attractive development space for, among other things, basements, energy production and infrastructure, waste disposal and treatment, groundwater abstraction and water storage, transportation, industrial manufacturing, and logistics.

BISingapore lies at the southern end of Peninsular Malaysia, in a region dominated by the geological history of two continental fragments (Indochina-East Malaya and Sibumasu) that separated from the supercontinent of Gondwana during the Palaeozoic. These fragments are now joined together, along with rocks assigned to the Sukhothai Arc terrain, along the trace of the Bentong-Raub Suture Zone. Permian to mid-Triassic granitic and mafic intrusive rocks from that arc dominate central Singapore. In western and south-western Singapore a mid- to uppermost Triassic (to earliest Jurassic?) volcano-sedimentary succession was originally deposited in an active fore-arc basin as a shallow marine to terrestrial succession, broadly contemporaneous with the younger elements of the plutonic rocks of Singapore. After Metcalfe (2011) and Hall (2009).

The giant cavern facilities beneath Jurong Island entered service for oil storage in September 2014 (Pictured, left). This cavern complex lies some 150m below ground, delivering a storage capacity of 1.47 million m3 of liquid hydrocarbon - equivalent to some 580 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This capacity will double when the second phase of the work is completed.

Bedrock is now preserved only sporadically at the modern metropolitan n surface. Most natural outcrop is confined to coastline and to disused quarries, many of which are now flooded or in varying stages of reclamation.

The present new study is only made possible because of a new and comprehensive ground investigation programme commissioned for the BCA. This includes acquiring drillcore from more than 100 boreholes. Each borehole is typically about 200m deep, extending from the ground surface to some 70m below the engineered floors of any anticipated cavern storage space designs - totalling approximately 13, 400m of new drillcore. Some 100km of new seismic reflection and refraction data have been acquired in a number of designated development areas; all these new data are having a very significant impact on current understanding of Singapore geology.

None of the geological record that emerges from beneath the modern Singapore cityscape is straightforward. Embedding robust geoscience knowledge in sub-surface planning will help ensure that the future decision-making process will be well informed and so improve urban resilience.

Singapore lies at the southern end of Peninsular Malaysia, in a region dominated by the geological history of two continental fragments (Indochina-East Malaya and Sibumasu) that separated from the supercontinent of Gondwana during the Palaeozoic. These fragments are now joined together, along with rocks assigned to the Sukhothai Arc terrain, along the trace of the Bentong-Raub Suture Zone (see map above).

Now folded, thrust and cleaved, these Jurong strata record deformation and low-grade metamorphism that resulted when the fore-arc sequence became accreted onto Mesozoic Indochina-East Malaya during collision and suturing with Sibumasu across the Bentong-Raub line.

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