Ground improvements often aim to reduce settlement risks for foundations and this requires reliable methods of prediction. Current approaches are based on empirical procedures and methods developed over 30 years ago. This has resulted historically in designs and installations of unnecessarily sophisticated foundations. In addition many developments now encountered by ground improvement contractors involve previously developed or ‘brownfield’ sites made up of heterogeneous and variable made ground. Methods to predict settlements traditionally use destructive and invasive approaches such as SPT or CPT that can be insensitive to time dependent changes, which often occur when brownfield sites are improved. By comparison geophysical methods are both non-invasive and non-destructive. One such technique that has demonstrated considerable promise is that of continuous surface wave determinations, which allows stiffness depth profiles to be obtained in a cost effective way. A recently developed method to determine settlements from these data has shown through four case studies presented in this paper to accurately predict settlements measured from zone tests. Thus offers a potentially more reliable way to predict settlement profiles than traditionally used methods
