Flood and Scour Monitoring

Keeping our roads and railways operational has never been more important, especially as they face a constant challenge in the form of extreme weather. Heavy rain, wind, and icy conditions can cause infrastructure to flood, track beds and formations to wash out and bridge foundations to scour.

Weather events can also affect geotechnical assets, such as cuttings, embankments, and retaining walls. The ongoing impact of climate change only heightens this challenge. One-in-a-hundred-year events are taking place more and more frequently, having a destructive impact on critical infrastructure.

We’ve supported asset managers with the challenge of keeping roads and railways safe when poor weather strikes in the past by installing flood and scour monitoring systems on high-risk railway sites.

These systems are excellent at detecting changes in water level, as well as anticipating the moment that flood levels could be breached. What’s more, they can also capture photos of debris build up, water levels, and the status of railway lines. Bridge scour can also be detected via our technology.

With this technology, controllers have constant access to real-time information, avoiding the need to send teams out for an emergency inspection. Natural Resources Wales and Environment Agency flood alerts are also integrated into the same systems, allowing them to be pre-emptively placed into the alert to detect water levels. As well as this, structural monitoring data is also used to determine whether flood events have displaced any tracks, structures, or earthworks.

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Some of the benefits of our flood monitoring systems include:

• The systems allow Network Rail to inform TOCs (train operating companies) of closures ahead of time, in turn enabling them to plan train movements and avoid vehicles being stranded on the wrong side of a flooded section.
• Trains can continue to operate under temporary speed restrictions, even in flood conditions.
• Following flooding, sections of the line can be re-opened at 20mph if outputs of the monitoring equipment show no displacement.
• Operation is enhanced as it is no longer necessary to wait for civil examination to take place.
• Debris is detected with cameras, reducing the need for inspections following floods

Ultimately, our systems provide:

• Cost savings in compensation payments (schedule 8)
• Reduced disruption to passengers
• Reduced risk by avoiding the need to send staff out to assess flooded sites

Our SAMS™ data platform fully integrates systems and displays data from a variety of sources. Structural, flood monitoring and geotechnical sensors are input, alongside third party systems. These include predictive floor warning systems like Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales, and meteorological prediction data. This platform truly works as a one stop shop for efficient operations and maintenance.