Abstract
The effectiveness of monitoring and early-warning systems for ground deformation phenomena, such as sinkholes, depends on their ability to accurately resolve the ongoing ground displacement and detect the subtle deformation preceding catastrophic failures. Sagging sinkholes with a slow subsidence rate and diffuse edges pose a significant challenge for subsidence monitoring due to the low deformation rates and limited lateral strain gradients. In this work, we satisfactorily illustrate the practicality of the Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) to measure the spatial-temporal patterns of the vertical displacement in such challenging slow-moving sagging sinkholes. To assess the performance of the approach, we compare the strain recorded by the distributed optical fiber sensor with the vertical displacement measured by high-precision leveling. The results show a good spatial correlation with the ability to identify the maximum subsidence point. There is also a good temporal correlation with the detection of an acceleration phase in the subsidence associated with a flood event.
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Acknowledgment
This work has been supported by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España (Grant Nos. CGL2017-85045-P, PID2021-123189NB-I00, and DI-17-09169) and Government of Aragón (Grant No. Reference Group T20_23R). Jorge Sevil has a predoctoral contract (Grant No. PRE2018-084240) co-financed by the Spanish Government and the European Social Fund (ESF). The authors are very grateful to the City Hall of Alcalá de Ebro and the Confederación Hidrográfica del Ebro for granting permission to install the monitoring system.
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Sevillano, P., Preciado-Garbayo, J., Sevil, J. et al. Vertical Displacement Measurement in a Slow-Moving Sinkhole Using BOTDA. Photonic Sens 14, 240122 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13320-023-0696-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13320-023-0696-7