AbstractA numerical approach is presented for the ‘identification’ (or back calculation) of the earth pressure acting on embedded or retaining structures. The procedure is applicable to structures of any shape and requires a set ofin situmeasurements that may include displacements of points on the structure, values of concentrated forces, values of distributed loads at some locations, etc. Possible limiting values of the unknown loads, non‐linear structural behaviour, varying accuracies of the input data are accounted for in the problem formulation. Depending upon the type of problem, the solution is reached by means of the unconstrained or constrained minimization of a suitably defined error function. As an example, the proposed approach is applied to the identification of the earth pressure acting on some typical geotechnical engineering struc