Challenges in monitoring and managing engineered slopes in a changing climate

Abstract

Abstract. Geotechnical asset owners need to know which parts of their asset network are vulnerable to climate change induced failure in order to optimise future investment. Protecting these vulnerable slopes requires monitoring systems capable of identifying and alerting to asset operators changes in the internal conditions that precede failure. Current monitoring systems are heavily reliant on point sensors which can be difficult to interpret across slope scale. This paper presents challenges to producing such a system and research being carried out to address some of these using electrical resistance tomography (ERT). Experimental results show that whilst it is possible to measure soil water content indirectly via resistivity the relationship between resistivity and water content will change over time for a given slope. If geotechnical parameters such as pore water pressure are to be estimated using this method then ERT systems will require integrating with more conventional geotechnical instrumentation to ensure correct representative information is provided. The paper also presents examples of how such data can be processed and communicated to asset owners for the purposes of asset management.

Relationship of Resistivity Value with the Ground Material Information Obtained from Borehole Data: Case study

“…It is also important to understand how resistivity and soil suction interact when subjected to seasonally varying water content. This understanding is necessary for interpreting geophysical information gathered from electrical resistivity tomography arrays (Hughes et al, 2016).…”