Dams are considered “installations containing dangerous forces” under International Humanitarian Law due to the massive impact of a dam failure on the civilian population and the environment.  In 1975 the failure of the Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China caused more casualties than any other dam failure in history. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.

We, at Gempa Geoservices, provide Dam Monitoring Solutions on any kind of dam engineering design, either with structures using metals, concrete, or earthen body core.  And for such structures and applications listed before, Gempa Geoservices will provide real-time performance information to enable rapid decisions, to reduce financial costs and risks related to displacement or vibrational events affecting your assets.

Gempa Geoservice’s next generation platform for real time structure health monitoring (SHARD) is a web based application where Probablistic Safety Assessments (PSAs) are calculated in real-time and compared with response spectra given in design codes as the EC, NEHRP or DIN codes. Exceedance is checked and warning incidents are issued. In addition to the spectral comparison, data quality such as delay and variance are tracked and quality incidents are generated.

The built-in incident browser allows a quick and easy access to the history showing data quality, exceedance and earthquake occurrence. Incidents are displayed in heat maps giving an instant overview.

• Real-time calculation of response spectra
• Monitoring of response spectra exceedance
• Quality and exceedance incident browser
• Connectivity to earthquake report service
• Earthquake report generation
• Multi structure support
• Web based application

In combination with the Raspberry Shake product line, a robust dissemination tool for early warning and notifications, and the Common Acquisition Protocol Server(CAPS) developed to fulfill the needs to transfer multi-sensor data from the station to the data center, turns this solution into the most professional health assessment of engineered structures.

As nowadays more and more stations with co-located sensors like broadband seismometer, accelerometer, GPS, temperature, video cameras, etc. are built up, an acquisition protocol is required.  This can then efficiently handle low- and high-sampled data through one unified protocol.

CAPS features provide:

• Multi-sensor data transfer, e.g. waveform data, webcam images
• Redundant data transmission
• Ensures timeliness of data
• On the fly reconfiguration
• Lightweight protocol for minimized packet overhead
• Archived and real-time data served through one protocol and one connection
• Reliable data transfer, re-transmission of data in case of network outage or server restart
• Web interface for server monitoring and data review
• Secure communication via SSL
• Fine-grained access control
• Connectivity to the SeisComP framework

Gempa Geoservices S.A. works directly with our partners at Raspberry Shake S.A. integrating, as an example, a high resolution seismograph and acceleorgraph stations into our portfolio – the Raspberry Shake Pro.

The main features of the RS Pro are as follows:

• Tightly integrated into SeisComP to ensure minimal data latency and quick, accurate detections
• Fast, plug-and-go installation
• An all-in-one solution that integrates the sensors, digitizer, computer and GPS
• Web interface to allow a rapid configuration
• Earthquake Early Warning-compatible
• Highly sensitive with 6 components: 3 accelerometers + 3 orthogonal 4.5 Hz geophones electronically extended to 2s
• Optional infrasound sensor for volcano monitoring
• 24-bit 144 dB digitizer
• Native SeedLink and CAPS servers / miniSEED
• GPS/ NTP timing
• Pre generated DATALESS, inventory-xml, SAC_PZ and RESP files ready for download making integration with IRIS-DMC and SeisComP super easy

We can also integrate these applications with the Raspberry Shake 4D.   This is an IoT plug-and-play solution, which like the name suggests, FOUR sensors. Combined with the geophone from the original Raspberry Shake, we have added 3 strong motion MEMs accelerometers to give the device a total of four recording channels.

The circuit board of the Raspberry Shake 4D incorporates four 24 bit digitizers, each sampling the Earth’s motion at 100 samples per second (double its predecessor). We have also been able to boost the data transmission rate from one packet per second to four, which makes our latest version of the Raspberry Shake Earthquake Early Warning compatible.

The main features of this technology are as follow:

• Plug-and-play affordable home Earth monitoring solution
• Detect & measure earthquakes & seismic activities like structural motion, fracking, explosions, eruptions, avalanches, landslides, etc.
• Includes the Raspberry Pi board and all components
• Comes pre-built with everything you need to have your Raspberry Shake 4D working right out of the box
• Measure and record the Earth’s motion in all directions
• 100 samples per second sample rate (the original Raspberry Shake works at 50 sps)
• Includes a custom built rain proof, dust proof, bug proof, all weather enclosure
• 3 x orthogonally orientated MEMs acceleration sensors

For more information, read the technical specifications.