1 INTRODUCTION Increasing density of urban areas leads to erecting high-rise buildings with deep foundations, enabling their basements for car parking and other facilities. By increasing the foundation depth of these build- ings implies the need for more rigid earth retaining systems. This trend is usually reinforced by the need of founding on stiffer soil layers and also by the de- sire to create spaces for utilities. Several complex issues arise when designing un- derground facilities or infrastructures for high-rise buildings. Usually, the space allocated for deep ex- cavations in urban areas is not sufficient for sloped open cuts. This requires the construction, in ad- vance, of retaining structures. In many cases, the high depth of excavation or the conditions limiting the excavation-induced displacements leads to the need of prior constructing retaining walls with dif- ferent strutting systems (e.g. pre-stressed ground an- chors, steel struts or concrete slabs erected through the top-down method). The design of these support- ing systems must comply with the verification of the ultimate limit state and that of the serviceability lim- it state. Moreover, in some cases, beside the check for structural forces equilibrium of the retaining wall, the geotechnical analysis must also comply with the check for the loss of overall stability. Nu- merical methods used nowadays in the design pro- cess of geotechnical works are able to account for all the above mentioned issues arising in the current practice. The paper presents the calculations conducted by the authors for predicting the behavior of a deep ex- cavation, using the finite element method. This is in- timately related to the influence of initial conditions on the stress and strain state induced in the soil by the excavation process. Short remarks regarding the prediction of the excavations’ behavior by means of comparison 2D and 3D finite element analysis re- sults are briefly issued. 2 CASE STUDY OF A DEEP EXCAVATION 2.1 General description One of the most reliable methods for emphasizing the theoretical concepts for predicting the behavior of deep excavations is by applying them on real case studies. Thus, in the following, a case study of a deep excavation endorsing the car parking of an of- fice building (further referred to as EOD) in Vienna, Austria is presented. The infrastructure of the build- ing has 5 underground levels leading to an excava- tion depth of 21m, covering an area of about 2400m 2 . One of the most complex aspects of the current case study is represented by its depth in correlation with the height of the adjacent buildings (buildings Numerical analysis of deep excavations and prediction of their influence on neighboring buildings C. Capraru & D. Adam Institute of Geotechnics, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria J. Hoffmann STRABAG AG, Zentrale Technik, Vienna, Austria M. Pelzl 3P Geotechnik, Vienna, Austria ABSTRACT: Designing deep excavations in densely built areas implies complex aspects when estimating the effects induced on the existing built environment. Numerical methods used nowadays can account for both strength and deformability parameters of soils, helping the engineer in assessing not only difficult geometries and the sequence of construction stages, but also complex soil behavior through advanced constitutive mod- els. Thus, both the retaining wall deformations and excavation-induced ground movements can accurately be predicted. The paper focuses on presenting the application of the above stated issues on a practical case study by using the finite element method. In principle, this is related to the assimilation of appropriate calculation technique and constitutive soil models together with their associated geotechnical parameters. The case study is represented by a deep excavation constructed in Vienna, for which the results are validated by comparison to the measurements of real soil behavior.