Study, Definition and Application of General Alert and Alarm Criteria for Road Geotechnical Structures in the Operation and Maintenance Phase

The main purpose of this paper is to present the study, definition and application of general alert and alarm criteria to road geotechnical structures during the operation and maintenance phase. This work results from the need to apply global alert and alarm criteria to all the geotechnical structures of ASCENDI IGI. In the group of structures analysed, the following typologies of structures emerged: (i) Embankment slopes, (ii) Excavation slopes, (iii) Anchored walls, (iv) Reinforced Concrete walls, (v) Reinforced Earth walls, and (vi) Gabion walls. This document presents the monitoring and instrumentation methods implemented at ASCENDI. The general alert and alarm criteria were defined to support the interpretation of the installed instrumentation, particularly at the level of variations of displacements, deformations and loads. The definition of these criteria considers the type of structure (rigid or flexible), geometric characteristics, and material characteristics (geological and geotechnical). Since climate change is one of the greatest environmental threats of the twenty-first century, with profound consequences for various areas of society, this work intends to constitute an alternative approach to increase the resilience of geotechnical structures to natural hazards.