ABSTRACT
The monitoring and surveillance of civil engineering structures is an age-old practice. The greatest use of instrumentation has been in monitoring the safety of earth and rockfill dams, particularly due to increase in heights and construction on sites hither to considered unsafe. Besides this there has been better understanding of the behaviour of materials, developments in instruments and instrumentation techniques and in methods of analysis so as to adopt new designs. Visual inspection remains an integral part of the instrumentation of dams, but visual measurement has undergone a great change due to the advent of surveying instruments and surveying methods. Instruments embedded have improved, although have not totally replaced old ones. With the development of electric circuits, electronic sensors, remote data acquisition, automation has been possible. This does not imply that earlier publications on instrumentation of embankment dams have become obselete.
