Projects

Goal of the Project

The goal is to develop an approach on how levee deformation measurements can be used to monitor and to predict slope failure. Monitoring and predicting the performance of the dike will inform emergency response decisions during floods, and will at the same time enhance the insight in long-term performance of the dike.

Scientific Motivation

Past studies have made significant progress on developing techniques for satellite monitoring (Ozer, 2020), drones (Klerk, 2022) and in-situ monitoring (Aguilar Lopez et al., 2019) of flood defenses. However, individual monitoring techniques are still characterized by significant uncertainties and noise in observations. Moreover, most of the monitoring research has been into the long-term performance, while very limited work has been done on using monitoring for real-time risk and reliability assessments by coupling with geotechnical models (Ozer, 2020). Particularly the time-dependent response during extreme flood loads is highly uncertain and requires consideration of transient behaviour as opposed to the (near) steady state conditions considered in regular assessment and design. To make a next step, it is the objective of this project to used satellite-based monitoring combined with other monitoring techniques to enable real-time reliability assessment of earthen dikes along rivers. Outcomes will inform emergency response decisions during floods, and will at the same time enhance the insight in long-term performance.

Case Study

• Flood Proof Holland: In this test polder of the TU Delft new digital monitoring technologies are tested.
• Purmerdijk: This secondary flood defense protects the Purmer polder against flooding from the higher elevated canal. The canal water level is relatively constant. In this case study the influence of meteorological conditions on the dike deformations is of particular interest.
• Lekdijk: This primary flood defense protects low-lying polders against flooding form the Rhine River. In this case study the influence of high river water levels on the dike deformations is of particular interest.

Expected Outcomes

• Method to interpreted soil surface deformation measurements. How to relate the underlying physical processes to the measured deformations
• Method to incorporate soil surface deformation measurements in reliability analysis of embankment slope stability
• Prototype dashboard of monitoring / early warning system for geotechnical embankment failure