Survey Assessments for Waterfront Facility Engineering

Waterfront facilities are located in challenging marine environments in which it is difficult to perform assessment surveys. As these facilities age, they must be monitored and they will eventually require rehabilitation. The ability to capture detailed geospatial survey information can be a critical asset in this process. Vital information may include the absolute position of piles, erosion/displacement of revetment material, debris accumulation, and/or sediment scour/deposition. Integrating accurate and detailed mobile laser scanning with precision multibeam bathymetry creates an extremely dense network of points that spans both the above and below water components of waterfront structures. The collected data points can be used in GIS and/or CAD software environments to model the seafloor, piles, and other infrastructure features. The resulting information can play a vital role in determining remedial design strategies and assessing the associated costs. In other circumstances, engineers can better design new/replacement on-dock facilities by taking full advantage of the accurate positional information of the piles under the dock. By conducting as-built or baseline surveys, this technique can also play an important role in understanding how the infrastructure has been impacted following episodic events. This paper addresses how these technologies may be used to acquire valuable condition and survey information and how this information may be used for better engineering decision-making.