A New Database Structure Guiding the Combination of Geophysical and Geotechnical Methods for Levee Investigation

Summary In this study, we introduce a new database framework for levee investigation. We are considering on an equal footing geophysical and geotechnical investigation methods in order to assist the agencies and levee managers in selecting the most relevant methods for the levees’ characterization. For this to be possible, we are taking into account the environmental constraints, the pathologies and the failure modes of the levees. The other aspect of this work is to open new ways of reflection in the research community with an important bibliographic work being carried out. We first focus on the relations between pathological physical properties and failure modes of a levee in order to identify which properties and characteristics of a levee need to be estimated. Then, we display our new database framework using the example of the Electrical Resistivity Tomography method. This work finally insists on the benefits of such a structure to propose new method investigation combinations and to provide a significant quantity of references for the research community.