Monitoring Requirements, Limitations and Applications

This chapter describes how to integrate the instrumentation presented in Chapter 3 into a reliable and practical performance monitoring system. Slope monitoring is not merely the selection and installation of instruments, but a comprehensive step-by-step engineering process beginning with a defined objective and ending with data interpretation, results reporting, and taking appropriate actions. The goal of a comprehensive performance monitoring program is to achieve mine stability verification as a significant component of the operation’s geotechnical risk management process, as illustrated in Fig. 4.1 . Planning the monitoring program should be logical and comprehensive, as the measurement problem may require several different instrument types that collect information across a range of varying scales, from a single tension crack to the entire pit slope and adjacent infrastructure. Furthermore, because of physical limitations and economic constraints, not all parameters can be measured with equal ease and success.