Quantitative aspects of urban impacts on groundwater

Continued expansion of large cities, climate changes, water scarcity and its continued degradation, have created the need for a systematic study of the impact of urbanization on underground water. Urban hydrogeology has been gradually appeared in the last decades trying to analyze, explain and provide solutions to problems resulted from the interaction between underground water and urban infrastructure. The study of underground water issues in the urban field was defined in the last decade as a specialized branch of hidrogeology. While studying the behaviour of underground water basics as a science are well-established, specific aspects of underground water in urban areas have began to be recognized. Fundamental problems of urban hidrogeology are not substantially different from those of the classic hidrogeology, but the scale of time and space is different. In this context it can be outline some of the major aspects of urban underground, built in interaction with underground water: fluctuations of underground water level, sump and drainage works, the influence of underground constrctions on the underground regime, infiltration phenomena respectively exfiltrations between underground water and sewage networks, subsidence, issues addressed in the paper.