Geotechnical News June 2011
29
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Geoscope Web-based Data Management
Software
Martin Beth, Soldata
Introduction
This is not a product presentation but
rather a general paper about web-
based data management software. In
this short one-pager I shall first list the
typical level of expectation nowadays,
based on my understanding of technical
specifications from all size projects in
US, Europe and Asia, and then indicate
some important issues and lessons
learned from our experience.
The Standard Expectations
All clients nowadays expect the
following:
• Data to be displayed on the Internet
as soon as collected.
• Full Internet access, password pro-
tected, available on PC, tablets or
mobile phones.
• Graphical site views, helping the us-
ers to understand the large flow of
data coming towards them. These
views should combine flexibil-
ity and simplicity, different graphs
types, etc…
• Ability to integrate all types of auto-
matic or manual data, for any type
of sensor.
• Ability to carry out various calcula-
tions of the data.
• Alarms by mail and SMS.
First Important Issue:
Scalability
The software should be simple and easy
to use and be applicable for small sites.
But it should also have the capacity to
handle mega-sites such as for example
Barcelona Linea 9 Metro Line, where
we currently have 1.5 billion data from
over 50,000 measurements points,
inside a 130 Gb database.
The risk of too much data should
be overcome. The system should help
the user to remain in control of the
data flow; it should include tools to
simplify, to filter and to sort the data.
This is neither easy nor obvious.
Second Important Issue:
Security
What happens if something goes wrong
with the monitoring system itself? The
following two main features should be
available:
• There should be a watchdog com-
puter somewhere, separate from the
site and from the database, check-
ing that the monitoring system and
the module in
charge of send-
ing the alarms are
working
prop-
erly, have opera-
tional internet ac-
cess, etc….
•
It must be
remembered that
SMS are not con-
sidered as a certi-
fied and secured
system. Have you
never received an
SMS a few hours
or even a few
days after it was written? The soft-
ware should include an automatic
repeat mode or even an automatic
escalation process until the alarm
has been acknowledged.
Security against data loss is crucial.
Storage of intermediate data at different
steps along the data flow line should
also be implemented. Furthermore the
system should have the capability to
process past data when restarted.
Third Important Issue: Data
Presentation and Data Analysis
From our experience:
• 3D interactive “computer game”
type site views are very nice and
sexy and will add a strong positive
feeling about the software. But in
reality let’s face it; they are not a
lot of use to the engineer. Over the
past 10 years and say 500 monitor-
ing sites, we have probably used
this functionality a dozen times.
• On the contrary it is of the utmost
importance for the software to be
able to integrate external informa-
tion of parameters affecting the
data, like tunnel face position, com-
ments by the users about the data,
geological log reports, grouting
data, and other external event likely
to influence the results. The system
should include a log book, for users
to enter any type of information,
and it should be possible to view
this information on the graphs.
• Isolign plots are also useful in grasp-
ing rapidly a global idea of the site
behaviour. See Figure 1.
Martin Beth, Technical Manager,
Soldata Group, c/o NCC, 12 Mc-
Clane Street, Cuddy. PA, 15031, USA,
(412) 860-2973, martin.beth@soldata.
fr.
Figure 1. An isolign plot of road surface and buildings set-
tlement, and the tunnel advance (yellow line), both updated
automatically in “real time”.
