Dam safety systems are systems monitoring the state of dam

Dam

A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are...

s used for hydropower

Hydropower

Hydropower, hydraulic power, hydrokinetic power or water power is power that is derived from the force or energy of falling water, which may be harnessed for useful purposes. Since ancient times, hydropower has been used for irrigation and the operation of various mechanical devices, such as...

 or other purposes. This includes the use of differential GPS

Differential GPS

Differential Global Positioning System is an enhancement to Global Positioning System that provides improved location accuracy, from the 15-meter nominal GPS accuracy to about 10 cm in case of the best implementations....

 and SAR remote sensing

Synthetic aperture radar

Synthetic-aperture radar is a form of radar whose defining characteristic is its use of relative motion between an antenna and its target region to provide distinctive long-term coherent-signal variations that are exploited to obtain finer spatial resolution than is possible with conventional...

 to monitor the risk

Risk

Risk is the potential that a chosen action or activity will lead to a loss . The notion implies that a choice having an influence on the outcome exists . Potential losses themselves may also be called "risks"...

s imposed by landslide

Landslide

A landslide or landslip is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground movement, such as rockfalls, deep failure of slopes and shallow debris flows, which can occur in offshore, coastal and onshore environments...

s and subsidence

Subsidence

Subsidence is the motion of a surface as it shifts downward relative to a datum such as sea-level. The opposite of subsidence is uplift, which results in an increase in elevation...

. For large dams seismographs are used to detect Reservoir Induced Seismicity that could threaten the stability of the dam . The output of these systems can provide warning

Emergency population warning

An emergency population warning is a method whereby local, regional, or national authorities can contact members of the public en masse to warn them of an impending emergency...

 to the local population ahead of a potential collapse.

Systems in the USA

Dam safety systems became a focus of multi-agency regulations during the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers  construction of large flood control

Flood control

In communications, flood control is a feature of many communication protocols designed to prevent overwhelming of a destination receiver. Such controls can be implemented either in software or in hardware, and will often request that the message be resent after the receiver has finished...

 and hydro-electric power generation projects. To help benchmark proven practices, the Association of State Dam Safety Officials (ASDSO) formed a national non-profit organization

Non-profit organization

Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...

 of state and federal dam safety regulators, dam owners and operators, engineering consultants, manufacturers and suppliers, academia, contractors and others interested in dams safety. More recently public safety concerns were addressed by the Indian Dams Safety Act of 1992 during hearings before the Select Committee on Indian Affairs, United States Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

, 102nd Congress, second session, on S. 2617. The purpose was to provide for the maintenance of dams located on Indian lands in New Mexico

New Mexico

New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...

 by the Bureau of Indian Affairs

Bureau of Indian Affairs

The Bureau of Indian Affairs is an agency of the federal government of the United States within the US Department of the Interior. It is responsible for the administration and management of of land held in trust by the United States for Native Americans in the United States, Native American...

 through contracts with the Indian tribes. (August 4, 1992 in Washington, D.C.)

The ASDSO Conference Proceedings paper by Gary R. Holtzhausen (1991) describes the effective use of tiltmeter

Tiltmeter

A tiltmeter is an instrument designed to measure very small changes from the horizontal level, either on the ground or in structures. A similar term, in less common usage, is the inclinometer...

s with remote sensing

Remote sensing

Remote sensing is the acquisition of information about an object or phenomenon, without making physical contact with the object. In modern usage, the term generally refers to the use of aerial sensor technologies to detect and classify objects on Earth by means of propagated signals Remote sensing...

 to provide reliable low-cost early warning of impending structural failures.

External links

• ASDSO; Association of Dam Safety Officials
• DamSafety: Commercial comprehensive approach to Dam Safety
• Dam Smart: Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) solutions
• Earth Won International Commission on Large Dams
• MCEER: Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research
• MoDNR: Natural Disaster Resources (14 December 2005 Dam Failure)
• Comprehensive Survey of Missouri's Dam Safety Law
• Dam Anchor Cable Fault Detection
• Geomation, Inc.; Automated Systems and Telemetry for Dam Safety Monitoring