Grant: Collaborative Science, Technology and Innovation Program - Collaborative R&D Initiatives

Monitoring dam structures under climate change conditions is essential in terms of assessing their safety, adapting their operations, and ensuring their long-term viability in the face of changing environmental factors. Such monitoring helps mitigate risks, protect downstream communities and maintain critical water storage and management infrastructure. Canada, with its numerous dams, faces unique challenges like harsh climates and rugged terrain, making innovative monitoring techniques essential. Traditional monitoring methods of dams and their infrastructures have limitations, but Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) offers a cost-effective and non-invasive solution. This project aims to make InSAR technology more accessible and cost-effective for dam managers and operators in Canada. It plans to establish a near-real-time monitoring system for dams using automated InSAR processing and analysis. The system will use SAR data from Sentinel-1 and/or RCM satellites, potentially the future SAR data in L- and S- bands from NISAR mission, and L-band SAOCOM. The chosen InSAR technique, Small Baseline Subset (SBAS), is effective for monitoring and focus earth-fill dams in Ontario, Canada in vegetated areas. Open-source software packages like ISCE and MintPy will be used for data processing. The projects primary objectives include developing a user-friendly monitoring tool and advancing knowledge in the field of remote sensing-based dam safety monitoring. The anticipated outcomes include cost-efficient monitoring, near-real-time monitoring capabilities, and valuable scientific contributions to the field of infrastructure monitoring.