No engineer without experience thinks anything is a good idea. Here we use a perimeter drain buried around the foundation walls just below the footing levels. Add drain rock and filter cloth and you can keep a basement very dry. The concrete is waterproofed (read resistant) on the outside with a waterproofing chemical that looks like very runny roofing tar. It is applied with a roller.
There are some different interior things that can be done to make an air break between the concrete wall and the interior finish. There are insulated Styrofoam forms that both insulate the basement and provide concrete forms. Of course what ever method you use to ensure it is dry has to be accepted in your building codes.
So what do you do with the water collected by the perimeter drains? In a perfect world they would gravity feed to the storm sewer but the sewer might be just for waste water. the sewer might be higher than the perimeter drain and require a pump that can keep up with the flow. You also have to control the runoff from the roof so it also flows away from the foundations. If you are prone to power outages then you will also want back up power for a pump since storms power outages and excess water often come as a party.
There are a lot of ways to deal with ground water and maybe the hardest part if finding someone competent where you live to design a system to protect from water inside the basement. Find someone with experience in your part of the world and you can have a very warm and dry basement. Or maybe cool and dry would be better?
Basements are very common where ever we get frost. The advantage is the house is supported on the ground below the frost line so the frost won't move the house or crack foundations.
I live on the southwest corner of Canada where frost is very rare, near sea level, and most houses here are slab on grade or have only a shallow basement a few feet into the ground.
