On the morning of June 6, 2023, a considerable portion of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine – vital for water management and hydroelectric power generation – suffered a collapse while under Russian control. Russia had seized the dam early into its invasion of Ukraine, and though independent investigations suggested that Russia destroyed it to stop a counterattack from Ukraine, Russia has denied responsibility. Latest findings published this morning within the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment from a University of Houston spaceborne-monitoring team indicate the dam can have had deformation hotspots before the war, pre-dating the actual collapse.
“Through our evaluation, we observed displacements characterizing different segments of the dam, as much as two years prior to the actual collapse,” reports UH assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Pietro Milillo. Within the article, Milillo and team present the outcomes of a technique called InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) which measures infrastructure deformation from space with millimetric accuracy using radar images of the Earth’s surface collected from orbiting satellites.
The findings got here about while the team was conducting a study monitoring the soundness of infrastructure through the Russian invasion of Ukraine. By leveraging spaceborne technology, the team, including the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) uncovered previously unseen details of the pre-collapse of the dam and detected movements and deformations within the dam years before the collapse, providing invaluable insights into its stability.
“This study highlights the importance of proactive monitoring and the role of distant sensing in ensuring the protection and integrity of critical infrastructure” said lead writer Amin Tavakkoliestahbanati, co-author and graduate student in Geosensing System Engineering within the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at UH. “Our findings emphasize the importance of continuous surveillance to detect and address potential risks before they escalate into catastrophic events.”
“Only in recent times are we in a position to observe such phenomena because of the increased variety of satellites flying in space able to such measurements,” said Milillo, who can be a visiting scientist at DLR.
“Current hypotheses ascribe the collapse of the dam to an explosion that occurred on June 6, 2023. Although our evaluation cannot exclude an explosion that occurred on that date, they’ll discover existing damage mechanisms that might need affected the dam before its collapse,” said Milillo.
Milillo said that the info within the study support the hypothesis that the structure was moving downward since June 2021. “With the start of the war, neglected dam maintenance and operations might need destabilized the structure over specific areas, favoring the event of the above-mentioned mechanisms,” he said.
The research not only offers invaluable insights into the events resulting in the collapse of the Kakhovka Dam but in addition underscores the potential of InSAR as a proactive monitoring tool for infrastructure stability assessment.
Because the world faces increasing challenges related to climate change and geopolitical instability, such studies pave the way in which for more informed decision-making processes and enhanced risk assessment strategies. InSAR’s ability to detect and quantify ground movements with high precision and over prolonged periods of time contributes to enhanced risk assessment, forensic engineering activities and informed decision-making processes.
The research was supported by the NASA Decadal Survey Incubation Studies. Joining Tavakkoliestahbanati and Milillo on the project were Giorgia Giardina and Hao Kuai at TU Delft.
