**1. Introduction**

The most important aspects for the design of any foundation system are safety, serviceability, and sustainability. The requirements for safety and serviceability are defined in standards, codes, and regulations. For sustainable construction, a reduction of construction material used and energy consumed during the construction phase and the service phase of a building/structure is important. Regarding the changing climate and the necessity to avoid CO2 emissions, the design and construction of new buildings and structures have to be optimized. The focus has to be on the production of cement. The production of one ton of cement leads to an emission of about 800 kg of CO2. This is about 91% of the whole CO2 footprint of concrete and about 8% of the man-made CO2 emission of the world [1]. This shows that the reduction of concrete for any kind of structure is an important aspect for the reduction of CO2 emission.

Optimized foundations systems lead to a reduction of concrete. This optimization has to consider the requirements of safety, serviceability, and sustainability. For the foundation systems of high-rise buildings, the following parts are necessary:


All of these three important aspects will be explained in the following chapter. Nevertheless, the precondition for any kind of safe and optimized design is a sufficient soil and groundwater investigation.
