Mapping of physical, environmental and legal conflicts and interlinkages between underground resources, excluding the surface environmental components and geological hazards, indicates that conflicts of all types occur. Groundwater, minerals and urban underground infrastructure have the most numerous conflicts, resulting from the provisions of sectoral governance (legislation, regulations, codes and standards) that are not harmonized and unfavorable physical and chemical interactions due to inappropriate planning and design. This study provides a review of the relevant European Union laws and calls for smart policy and legislation to overcome these problems. Acknowledging that many aspects remain with the sovereign jurisdictions of Member States, joint actions may govern the sector towards sustainable solutions and undistorted competition. Ownership of resources and permitting is of paramount importance and a legal subject to be resolved. The depth limitation of landowners’ rights should be clearly defined in national laws, civil codes or construction acts, because of deep garages, cellars and heat pump boreholes reaching the depth interval of other public or company resources. As a first foundational contribution, this study presents a holistic classification of underground resources, including urban underground space, and subclasses for spatial development planning and asset management. It proposes a pragmatic evaluation tool by applying the criticality assessment methodology in two alternative manners: on the economic and the resilience nexus. Fine-tuning the legislation, the transformation of land use planning into 4D spatial development planning supported by openly accessible online geoinformation system, the comparative criticality assessment, and the systematic use of strategic impact assessment for relevant national and regional programs comprise the set of potential tools and measures that can promote the enhanced, and more sustainable, use of underground space and its natural resources.
Hámor et al. (Wed,) studied this question.