KSEF RDE: Dynamic, Distributed Real-Time System for Geosystem Health Monitoring

Each year, the U.S. and countries around the world experiences failures of various geosystems as a result of natural or manmade changes to the static equilibrium state of the systems. These geosystems include all geotechnical-based systems such as cut and natural slopes, earth and earth retention structures, embankments, and foundation systems. Failure of these geotechnical based-systems otten results in great human suffering and can cause billions of dollars in losses. Many of the mechanisms associated with geosystem failure routinely occur under certain change conditions such as changes in the groundwater condition or increases in the surcharge. Thus, the initiation of a particular geosystem failure can be correlated to specific environmental (natural and manmade) changes. Geosystem health monitoring (GHM) involves temporal and spatial assessment of system response during manmade or natural environmental change events. From those assessments, forward predictions of geosystem response are developed which can later be used to provide warnings if the system response exceeds systems limits (e.g. shear stress increases due to a newly applied surcharge load exceeds the shear capacity of a particular embankment). Research is required to develop a reliable and cost effective health monitoring system that has the capability of real-time remote monitoring of geosystem response to dynamic changes to the static equilibrium state. A GHM system based on wireless technology is suggested as such a system. Funds are requested to purchase a Remote Terminal Unit Data Logger system that is capable of remote data acquisition and instrumentation control of multiple insitu sensors. This system will form the backbone of a ubiquitous sensor network that will provide an early warning system for emergent problems and will facilitate a better understanding of the underlying geotechnical phenomena.