26
Geotechnical News • March 2012
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Remote monitoring of deformation. Introduction
John Dunnicliff
I was very impressed by the num-
ber of papers about remote methods
for monitoring deformation at last
September’s International Symposium
on Field Measurements in GeoMe-
chanics (FMGM) in Berlin. Because I
knew almost nothing about several of
these, with their multiple acronyms, I
decided to read the papers and learn.
But then a colleague had a better idea
– find knowledgeable people and ask
each to write a brief article. So that’s
where we’re going.
In this and the following GIN there
are/will be seven one-page articles
about the monitoring methods in the
table below.
I considered including airborne laser
scanning (ALS or Aerial LIDAR), but
have been advised that this is more
applicable to topographical mapping
than for displacement monitoring due
to the low accuracy. I also considered
including digital image correlation,
but have learned that this method is
still in the R&D stage, and not yet
ready for our use on our projects.
We’ve had full-length articles in
previous GINs about three of these
methods:
• Robotic total stations
(by David
Cook, December 2006, with
discussions by Martin Beth, Brian
Dorwart, Richard Flanagan and
Trevor Greening, March 2007.
Also by Allen Marr, September
2008)
• Terrestrial interferometric synthetic
aperture radar
(by Paolo Maz-
zanti, June 2011
• Reflectorless robotic total stations
(by Damien Tamagnan and Martin
Beth, September 2011)
but I decided to include them among
the current one-pagers for complete-
ness.
So that we’d have some uniformity,
I’ve given the authors some guidelines
about format and subheadings.
This episode of GIN has articles about
the first four methods in the table (in
alphabetical order of first author’s
name), and the remainder will be in
the June episode. To close out this
topic, in June there will also be a
concluding article by a colleague from
Italy who has experience with most
of these methods. He will read all the
one-pagers and write a comparative
analysis of the various methods for
remote monitoring of deformation.
This is helping me to clarify my
muddled brain—I hope yours too.
Two important action items for
you:
• I recognize that, if you’ve had
experience with any of these
methods, you may not agree with
all that the authors say. If that’s
the case, or if you’d like to add
something that would be useful to
readers of GIN, please send me a
discussion.
• We’ve included the commercial
sources in North America that we
know about, but are likely to have
missed some. If you know of oth-
ers, please tell me, and I’ll include
those in a future GIN.
Monitoring Method Acronym(s)
Author(s)
Author’s
Company
Terrestrial laser scan-
ning (light detection and
ranging)
TLS
Terrestrial
LiDAR
Matthew Lato Norwegian Geo-
technical Institute
Terrestrial interferomet-
ric synthetic aperture
radar
TInSAR
GBInSAR
Paolo
Mazzanti
NHAZCA (Natural
HAZards Control
and Assessment),
Italy
Robotic total stations
(automatic total stations,
automated motorized
total stations)
RTS
ATS
AMTS
Rob Nyren,
Ryan Drefus and
Sean Johnson
Geocomp, USA
Reflectorless robotic
total stations
RRTS
Damien
Tamagnan and
Martin Beth
SolData, France,
USA and other
locations
Satellite interferometric
synthetic aperture radar
SInSAR,
including
DInSAR and
PSInSAR
Francesca
Bozzano
University of
Rome, Italy
Digital photogrammetry
Raul Fuentes
Stuart Robson
University College
London
Differential global posi-
tioning system
D-GPS
Rob Nyren
Jason Bond
Geocomp, USA
Gemini Navsoft
Technologies,
Canada
