Dear Colleagues,

Monitoring the structural integrity of dams is critical to ensuring their safe condition and maintaining their operational functions. Dam failures can lead to significant social, economic, and environmental consequences, posing significant risk to people, communities, infrastructures, and nature. Therefore, it is imperative to maintain ongoing surveillance and safety programs to identify critical situations that could result in catastrophic infrastructure damage and loss of life. Occasionally, failures may not lead to complete dam collapse, but they can still jeopardize operational conditions, causing substantial economic losses. This can occur, for example, due to interruptions in energy production or related activities like hydraulic regulation and water storage.

Due to the complexity of dams, the use of multiple sensors is required for their monitoring. Each sensor is designed and installed to focus on specific areas of the dam, the slopes surrounding the reservoir, or the structures related to public services. Monitoring serves not only to provide early warnings of potential collapses but also valuable data for verifying design parameters, investigating the reasons behind deformation processes, and learning essential lessons for implementation in future projects.

Although the deformation monitoring of this man-made infrastructure is mandatory and undeniably accurate and reliable, it is usually time-consuming and expensive. Monitoring measurements involve the establishment of classical geodetic networks (triangulations/trilaterations and leveling), GNSS networks for monitoring the structure and surrounding areas, the inclusion of geotechnical/structural sensors to measure local deformations and other physical quantities, and the application of other remote sensing techniques using ground-based and satellite platforms, such as terrestrial laser scanning (TLS), ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GBSAR), or spaceborne SAR interferometry (InSAR).

Currently, integrated monitoring systems combine information from several sources to monitor different processes that may impact structural stability or to cross-validate different results. Space geodetic techniques offer significant advantages over conventional geodetic techniques, making them efficient monitoring methods in terms of time and cost. In particular, the use of GNSS and InSAR techniques, together with the high availability of medium- and high-spatial-resolution images from the latest generation of SAR constellations with shorter revisit times and the continuous development of algorithms for time series analysis, aims to accelerate the collection of results and their reliability.

In summary, advancements in measuring instruments, computer science, and global Earth observation systems have improved the methods of analysis and computation for stability monitoring in civil engineering. The goal of this Special Issue is to promote satellite geodesy as a tool for monitoring dams by collecting success cases in which these monitoring techniques, either alone or in combination with other techniques, allow deformations in this type of structure to be detected.

We look forward to receiving your contribution to this Special Issue on “Dam Stability Monitoring with Satellite Geodesy”.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Miguel Ruiz Armenteros
Prof. Dr. Roberto Tomás
Dr. Joaquim João Sousa
Prof. Dr. M. Clara de Lacy
Prof. Dr. Zhenhong Li
Guest Editors

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• dam
• satellite geodesy
• remote sensing
• GNSS
• radar interferometry
• InSAR
• deformation monitoring
• geodetic measurements
• geotechnical measurements
• infrastructure
• earth observation
• sensors

• Dam Stability Monitoring with Satellite Geodesy in Remote Sensing (8 articles)