Multi-sensor approach to settlement analysis of earth dams

In this paper, a fusion method for the settlement study of the earth dams based on geodetic and geotechnical data is developed. The developed method can be algorithmically explained as follows: (a) interpolation of the geotechnical data to the epoch of geodetic observations by four degree polynomial fitting, which serves as a low-pass filter. (b) Conversion of the initial observations into time series of the dam heights at the geodetic and geotechnical stations. (c) Fusion of the data from the two sources at different fusion levels. (d) Final decision based on the deformation parameters derived from fused data. The significant innovation of the proposed method centered upon its ability to incorporate geodetic and geotechnical observation types into a one integrated solution through fusion. The method is numerically tested for the Karkhe earth dam by using geodetic and geotechnical data from 1997 till 2009. The numerical evaluation at 229 check points indicates more than 70% improvement in the settlementmodeling based on the fusion of the geodetic and geotechnical data, as compared to the settlement modeling based on geotechnical data alone.