Özer Işıl E, Rikkert Stephan J H, van Leijen Freek J, Jonkman Sebastiaan N, Hanssen Ramon F
Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN, Delft, The Netherlands.
Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 25;9(1):2646. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39474-x.
Levees are critical in providing protection against catastrophic flood events, and thus require continuous monitoring. Current levee inspection methods rely on limited information obtained by visual inspection, resulting in infrequent, localized, mostly qualitative and subjective assessments. This hampers the timely detection of problematic locations and the assessment of levee safety in general. Satellite radar interferometry yields weekly observations of levee conditions with high precision which complement current inspection methods. Here we show that levees are susceptible to short-term swelling and shrinkage associated with meteorological conditions, and assess how deformations can be related to the geohydrological properties and the safety of the levee. Our findings allow to understand the sub-seasonal behaviour of the levee in greater detail and to predict swelling and shrinkage due to variation of the loading conditions. This will improve the detection of anomalous levee responses which contributes to the development of reliable early warning methods using continuous deformation monitoring.
堤坝对于防范灾难性洪水事件至关重要，因此需要持续监测。当前的堤坝检查方法依赖于通过目视检查获得的有限信息，导致评估不频繁、局部化，且大多是定性和主观的。这阻碍了问题位置的及时发现以及总体上对堤坝安全性的评估。卫星雷达干涉测量法能高精度地每周观测堤坝状况，对当前的检查方法起到补充作用。在此我们表明，堤坝易受与气象条件相关的短期膨胀和收缩影响，并评估变形如何与地质水文特性及堤坝安全性相关。我们的研究结果有助于更详细地了解堤坝的亚季节行为，并预测由于荷载条件变化引起的膨胀和收缩。这将改进对异常堤坝响应的检测，有助于利用连续变形监测开发可靠的早期预警方法。
