Geophysical monitoring of river levees infrastructure

As extreme weather events like heavy rainfall, storms, and flooding become more frequent and intense due to climate change, levees are put under increasing pressure. River levees play a crucial role in safeguarding human lives and economic activities, acting as vital barriers against such extreme events. The main causes of embankment failure include both external and internal erosion, as well as instability, primarily driven by the strong water pressure exerted during river floods. Additionally, other meteorological phenomena, human activities, and the presence of animals or certain types of vegetation can weaken levees, contributing to instability, subsidence, or breakage. To mitigate these risks and ensure the long-term safety of levees, regular maintenance, preventative measures, and the implementation of advanced monitoring systems are essential to detect early signs of weakness and structural instability. Geophysical methods could play a vital role in assessing the integrity and stability of levees, providing essential data for their design, maintenance, and monitoring. Additionally, these methods are non-invasive, allowing for frequent and cost-effective monitoring without disrupting levee functionality. Ultimately, the integration of geophysical data with engineering assessments enhances levee safety, ensuring better flood protection. In the past years, the geophysical prospection methods have been improved for the inspection of levees infrastructure in order to detect the heterogeneity, which should be the critical aspects destabilizing the hydraulic system. Anyway, the potential of geophysical techniques in levees is mainly known in characterisation contexts, while a monitoring use has not yet been developed. Therefore, new applications and laboratory experiments are needed to enhance their capability and development. Therefore, new applications and laboratory experiments are needed to enhance their capabilities and development. Additionally, leveraging advancements in real-time data acquisition and interpretation technologies could improve the overall accuracy of the monitoring system, enabling earlier detection of potential issues and more effective management of preventive measures. This work introduces several geophysical applications on different levees taking in account internal heterogeneities, hydraulic infiltration, natural cavities and levees stability. Different geophysical methods were used: Electromagnetic methods (FDEM and GPR), Electrical Resistivity Tomography and Self Potential monitoring. The application was performed to monitor the effectiveness of the consolidation beneath the building with time. In addition, an experiment was carried out in the laboratory through the creation of a physical model of a levees where different simulations were disposed in order to improve the geophysical analysis.