Development of new methods and techniques for engineering surveys

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Recent catastrophic disasters such as: failures of levees and bridges in New Orleans; failure of overpasses in Montreal; collapses of roofs of large civil structures in Germany, Poland, and Russia; land slides in California and the Philippines; and rock failures and loss of lives in deep coal mines in China have dramatically increased demand for improving the existing and developing new deformation monitoring systems. Automation, multi-sensor integration, continuous data collection, integrated analysis, and enhanced accuracy and reliability of deformation surveys are the key issues to be addressed in the proposed research. The applicant and his associates at the Canadian Centre for Geodetic Engineering (CCGE) at UNB have been involved in the development of new methods and techniques for monitoring structural and ground deformations since mid '70s. Over the past two decades CCGE has gained world recognition as being among the leading centres in the development and implementation of new techniques and methods for monitoring, modeling, and prediction of structural and ground deformations. One example is the recent development of the ALERT software suite for fully automated and continuous monitoring of deformations. Over the last 5 years, the ALERT system has been commercialized and employed in monitoring large earth dams and open pit mines in Canada, USA, Chile, and Venezuela. The current version of ALERT uses geodetic Robotic Total Stations (RTS) linked with GPS receivers. This version, though perfectly suited to its current applications, would be unable to completely satisfy all monitoring needs. In order to satisfy needs of structural monitoring (e.g. monitoring of roofs of large structures, tunnels, pipelines, bridges) the ALERT system will be augmented by additional geodetic and various geotechnical sensors to provide a versatile and fully automated multi-sensor monitoring system. The focus will be on the use of a new type of fibre optic strainmeters, tiltmeters, pseudolites (terrestrial transmitter of GPS-like signals),and a ground based radar interferometry system. A methodology will be developed for a design of multi-sensor monitoring surveys using deterministic modeling of deformation.