Development and Implementation of an Integrated and Automated Dam Monitoring System for Jordan Valley Authority
Abdallah I. Husein Malkawi, Ph.D.
Associate Prof. of Geotechnical Engineering and
Consultant to Ministry of Water and Irrigation, Jordan Valley Authority - Civil
Engineering Department
Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid 22110 – JORDAN
E-mail: mhusein@just.edu.jo
Jordan Valley Authority is the primary governing agency in charge of the construction, maintenance, and operation of the entire infrastructure in the Jordan Valley. As part of the water resource development and management scheme, a large number of earth dams have been constructed; three dams are now under construction and many more are planned for near future construction. These large number of built or planned dams constitute a significant amount of capital investment by the government, and maintaining these dams’ operational conditions and their healthy performance functions are especially critical to the well beings of the Valley as well as the nation. Each as-built earth dam in Jordan Valley has various types of instrumentations installed, which in turn provide tools for monitoring the operational conditions of the dams during the service life of the structure.
However, the JVA engineers who typically lack adequate training for such a task have performed the maintenance and reading of these instrumentations. Furthermore, the reading of these instrumentations has been done manually, which is time consuming and labour intensive. The drawbacks of manual reading of these monitoring data include:
(1) Error in transcribing the data,
(2) Lack of automated mechanisms for data entry and query,
(3) Lack of efficient user graphic interface,
(4) Lack of effective means for interpreting the monitored data to make timely engineering judgment,
(5) Lack of automated warning system in case of emergency situations arise at the dam site, and
(6) Lack of efficient data management capabilities.
Because of these drawbacks of current data monitoring system, the full potential of dam instrumentation has not been fully realized. With a small amount of investment in upgrading current dam monitoring reporting system through the proposed project outlined herein, it is believed that a modern and state-of-the-art health monitoring system will be in place to help JVA manage/maintain/operate the vast number of earth and concrete dams in the valley.