A web platform for the systematic monitoring of coastal structures

Abstract

Due to both its geographic location and maritime importance, Portugal is equipped with a large number of port infrastructures, the majority of which built for goals such as to guarantee the tranquility of the sheltered areas of the harbour basins, to help controlling sedimentation by guiding the currents, to protect water taken from thermoelectric plants, amongst others. In Portugal, the most common of these structures is the rubblemound breakwater. Due to its characteristics, maintenance or repair works are common throughout its lifetime. However, the need for these repair works should be evaluated in advance, in order to avoid significant costs associated to those works or, even worse, the collapse of the structure. It is therefore quite important to evaluate the Present Condition of the structure, as well its Evolution and Risk Conditions. The Present Condition is periodically checked on-site and all relevant data gathered is recorded, by filling in inspection forms, in order to perform further comparisons and analyses with previous inspections of the structure, as to eventually characterize Evolution and Risk conditions. To expedite all this process and prevent likely occurrence of errors in data collection, a monitoring tool, supported through a map-based online geographic information system (WebGIS) was developed, enabling the georeferencing of the structures concerned. This system adapts to the location of the user’s device and to the capacities of the device itself. Media data, such as photos and videos can be associated to the structural data collected. The resulting platform was successfully evaluated by the involved researchers from Portuguese National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (which are the end users of the system), and by non-expert users.