STEADY · SaTEllyte synthetic Aperture radar interferometry to model Dam stabilitY

SaTEllyte synthetic Aperture radar interferometry to model Dam stabilitY

The aim of STEADY project is to identify new tools to support monitoring and managing of dams, particularly when gruelling safety situations do not allow adopting tradition monitoring techniques. Structural health assessment is an important practice to guarantee the safety of infrastructure in general. In case of dam monitoring, it is necessary to control the structure itself and the adjacent water reservoir, to pledge efficient operation and safety of surrounding areas. Ensuring the longevity of the structure requires the timely detection of any behaviour that could deteriorate the dam and potentially result in its shutdown or failure. The monitoring and maintaining of existing dams garnered even more importance regarding the European 2020 Energy Strategy aimed to increase the use of renewable energy. Considering that most of the largest hydroelectric power stations were built in the ‘70s, ‘80s, it is easy to understand the importance of monitoring and planning all the necessary maintenance works to guarantee the efficiency and stability of these structures. The detection and monitoring of surface displacements is increasingly performed through the analysis of satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, thanks to the non-invasiveness of their acquisition, the possibility to cover large areas in a short time and the new space missions equipped with high special resolution sensors. Nevertheless, the availability of SAR satellite acquisitions from the early 1990s enables to reconstruct the historical evolution of dam behaviour, defining its key parameters, possibly from its construction to the present. Furthermore, the progress on SAR Interferometry (InSAR) techniques through the development of Differential InSAR (DInSAR) and Advanced stacking techniques (A-DInSAR) allows velocity maps and displacement time-series to be obtained. There are some attempts of using Space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar data on civil engineer infrastructures but they are not generally considered as common practices. The importance of these techniques emerges when environmental or logistic conditions do not allow to monitor dams applying the traditional geodetic techniques. In such cases, multi-temporal DInSAR (MT DInSAR) constitutes a reliable diagnostic tool of dam structural health to avoid any unforeseen failure that may lead to a dramatic disaster. Results of STEADY projects proved the great capability of interferometric techniques on giving important information for dam monitoring, particularly showing how precursor deformation could be identified reducing the occurrence of hazards and disasters. Outcomes of STEADY showed how the proposed analyses should become a common practice on the infrastructure monitoring.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union