Continuous Deformation Monitoring With GPS

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers makes extensive use of modern instrumentation for measuring the behavior of large structures. One of these programs is high‐precision geodetic surveying. This is accomplished through the use of classical techniques and provides a reliable measure of displacement as a function of time. Unfortunately, it is a labor‐intensive endeavor, and thus surveys are made infrequently. With the deployment of the NAVSTAR GPS, a possibility for continuous, automatic monitoring of structures has materialized. Preliminary designs suggest that desk‐top computers can be used with relatively simple data links to monitor a network of GPS receivers. The data can subsequently be processed and a deformation analysis can be performed to compute deformation vectors at a precision of about 0.5 cm. This paper presents a preliminary design for a complete system to be demonstrated at a Corps project in early 1989.