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The Quay Walls of Amsterdam, Netherlands: An Approach for Collapse Risk Mitigation at the Municipal Scale Based on Multisource Monitoring and Surveying Data

Technical Paper

This paper presents a multiscale methodology for collapse risk mitigation of Amsterdam's 600 km of historic, aging quay walls, many of which are over 100 years old. Due to a lack of as-built information and limited assessment guidelines, predicting the end-of-life for these retaining structures is a major challenge.

 

  • Learn how a three-phase multiscale methodology prioritizes the most exposed historic quay walls in Amsterdam for urgent risk mitigation.

  • Understand how Multi-temporal Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (MT-InSAR) data is combined with conventional in-situ surveys to monitor displacements of retaining structures.

  • Discover the empirical relationships established between visual damage/movement indicators (like tilting) and quantitative displacement descriptors from terrestrial monitoring data.

  • See how the methodology uses wall crack patterns and displacement data to identify the most probable collapse mechanism affecting each structural block.

  • Grasp that integrating multi-source data is fundamental for setting up sustainable risk mitigation strategies and forecasting the end-of-life of aging municipal infrastructure.