TY - JOUR A1 - Niederleithinger, Ernst A1 - Weller, Andreas A1 - Lewis, R. T1 - Evaluation of geophysical techniques for dike inspection JF - Journal of environmental & engineering geophysics N2 - After some river embankment failures during recent floods in Germany, major investigation and improvement programs for river embankments have been implemented. Presently, the investigation mainly relies on existing documentation, visual inspection, and drilling and sampling. Geophysical techniques, which are applied non-destructively from the surface, have the potential to cover the gaps between sampling points and to enhance the reliability of subsurface information. This paper describes the evaluation results for resistivity, electromagnetic, seismic and GPR techniques acquired at a test site along the Mulde River in eastern Germany. The work was carried out under the government funded project DEISTRUKT. Each geophysical method has its own specific advantages and limitations. Keeping the requirements posed by current German guidelines for river embankments in mind, 2–D electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) is the method of first choice. However, all geophysical results have to be calibrated carefully using information, such as material properties and depth of structures, determined from boreholes. Although some recommendations are provided here, a set of detailed recommendations have been compiled in a handbook. KW - Dikes KW - Embankments KW - Flood KW - Geophysics KW - Geotechnics KW - Evaluation PY - 2012 DO - https://doi.org/10.2113/JEEG17.4.185 SN - 1083-1363 VL - 17 IS - 4 SP - 185 EP - 195 PB - EEGS CY - Denver, Colo., USA AN - OPUS4-27490 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -