Distribution of settlement at t_max for the optimal strategy for DS #2, heuristic 2A, obtained from 10⁴ sample settlement trajectories. The grey histogram represents the distribution of the settlement if only the initial surcharge of height h₀ = 0·95 m is applied. The bimodal histogram shows the distribution of the settlement obtained by adjusting the surcharge at t = 36 weeks, as prescribed by the strategy (see Table 3). A full-colour version of this figure can be found on the ICE Virtual Library (www.icevirtuallibrary.com)