Dams

  • Rockfill Concrete Face Dam
  • Concrete Gravity & Arch Dam
  • Roll Compact Concrete (RCC) Dam
  • Earthfill Dam

Dam performance monitoring plays a major role in ensuring public safety, validating structure design and understanding its behavior over its entire life in service.  Instrumentation systems for dams are designed according to the type of dam that needs to be monitored: concrete gravity, earthfill, rockfill, arch or rock-compacted concrete dams. 

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Dam monitoring overview

  • Dams are a critical infrastructure for power generation and water management. Unfortunately, every dam has an inherent potential for failure and needs to be closely monitored for public safety.
  • Long-term maintenance of dams is required to ensure performance, protect communities located downstream, and plan maintenance costs.
  • State-of-the art geotechnical and structural monitoring systems provide valuable insight in the current and future state of the dams.
  • Monitoring systems for dams are generally designed according to the type of dam to be monitored. Among the most important measurements are pore pressures, settlement, stress, temperature, seepage and cracking. Nowadays, monitoring is often automated using custom data acquisition systems, readings at various predetermined intervals during the construction, impoundment and operation phases.

Benefits of dam monitoring

  • GKM Consultants’ monitoring systems help owners and managers better follow their structures and manage maintenance work.
  • Dam monitoring systems provide enhanced security by integrating early warning systems that can be fully autonomous or integrated into a wider database.
  • The online tools that GKM Consultants offer are a one-stop shop for engineers to monitor their structures remotely.
  • With accomplishments in countries such as Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Guatemala or Canada, GKM Consultants’ long experience of working on dams across the world guarantees peace of mind to dam owners.

Our expertise in dam performance monitoring

GKM Consultants’ dam performance and safety monitoring systems are designed to acquire and store data from all types of instruments such as piezometers, weir monitors, tiltmeters and weather stations. They alleviate the need for manual measurements and the associated personnel costs.

Our dam monitoring systems offer smart acquisition: acquisition rates can be changed according to events, since they are able to trigger other systems such as pump stations or seismographs, and manage the power available to instruments and external devices.

Our Geotechnical & Structural Monitoring Systems for Dam include telecommunications options such as cellular or satellite modems to extract data in real-time from the instruments and pushing them directly into GKM Consultant’s online platform or into the dam operator’s own database system.

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Our solutions

Data Acquisition Systems - DL Series
Star Wireless Monitoring System
Concrete Curing Box System - C3 Match Series
Remote Data Management System (RDMS)

Related instruments

Piezometers
Weir Monitors
Pendulums
Inclinometers

related projects

Dam instrumentation and safety monitoring | Keeyask Dam, MANITOBA
Automated long-term monitoring of water reservoir | Muskrat Falls - North Spur, LABRADOR
Dam instrumentation system | Tsankov Kamak Dam, BULGARIA

Our expert team is ready to get started on your project.

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