PLT - Informed Decision Making with Automated Instrumentation Data Reports - A Case History in Dam Safety Monitoring

A slope failure below a series of recently constructed and historical retaining walls threatened the construction, schedule, and budget of the Santa Anita Dam modification project in Los Angeles, California. The series of retaining walls above the slope failure supports the only ingress and egress for dam access and modification construction. To restore the dam modification construction, the project team designed and deployed a real-time passive monitoring system with scheduled and on-demand instrumentation data reports. The real-time instrumentation and automated data reports provided the confidence and assurance needed to facilitate the completion of the Santa Anita Dam modification project. The monitoring methods used at Santa Anita were subsequently implemented at Big Tujunga dam to replace the existing obsolete Dams Automated Data Acquisition System (DADAS) and similarly improve data access through automated reporting of instrumentation data.