Subsidence Engineering Services
RESPEC provides comprehensive engineering services for surface subsidence:
- Benchmark and subsidence network design and installation
- Reference benchmark identification, including Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) surveys
- Level-survey specification, contracting, and oversight
- Subsidence interpretation, analysis, and reporting
- Expert testimony.
Our subsidence-monitoring and analysis approach can be formulated to address specific ground-movement problems or to fulfill general regulatory needs. Our salt mechanics expertise is especially useful in understanding the time-dependent subsidence over salt and potash facilities.
RESPEC has designed monitoring systems and analyzed subsidence over both dry- and solution-mined excavations in bedded and domal salts and potash deposits. Historically, subsidence data were often merely reported to regulatory agencies. We now use numerical modeling tools and the measured subsidence to monitor mine stability and cavern behavior. Stability interpretations based on subsidence measurements have been used in civil court cases and in testimony before regulatory agencies. We were responsible for monthly reports on dissolution-induced subsidence over the Retsof (New York) salt mine as it filled with fresh water and presented the local community and regulators with a definitive interpretation of the ultimate subsidence for the mine. We pioneered the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) to establish reference benchmark elevations for subsidence surveys over salt domes.