Provenance for the safety control of large civil engineering structures

Abstract

To support the safety control of large civil engineering structures as dams and bridges, raw data is collected from sensors placed in strategic points of the structures. This data is gathered through automatic or manual methods, and transformed into engineering quantities by specific algorithms. The life-cycle of this information is affected by different processes and systems, often involving different data schemas and file formats to store the same type of information. The Portuguese National Laboratory of Civil Engineering - LNEC is using a new system to store and manage the data collected from dams, which is also shared with EDP (National power company owning the dams). However, this system was designed for operational purposes, and not for long-term preservation and interoperability. Thus, it does not handle crucial provenance information required for data quality, preservation and interoperability purposes. According to the Portuguese law, LNEC is specifically responsible to maintain an updated record of the data and knowledge about the dams’ safety and behavior. Thus, the preservation of this data is not only an option but a legal obligation. For that, this data also requires complementary detailed context and provenance information, which might imply the need to define and put in place new descriptive and curation processes.