A decision support system for tunnel wall displacement interpretation

The daily geotechnical interpretation of 3d tunnel wall displacements acquired in underground construction projects is an expert task requiring a high degree of experience and qualification. To assist the responsible engineer on site in this sophisticated work, a decision support system has been developed. In the introduction this paper explains the relevance and status of 3d displacement monitoring in the New Austrian Tunnelling Method. Then it presents the developed decision support system and the connected Virtual Reality system used to visualise the system results. In more details, it describes the two major system components (the knowledge-based library and the decision support application), the input data and how these data are stepwise evaluated by use of a pattern matching method and a trend correlation matrix. Finally, the paper summarizes the development as a successful interdisciplinary cooperation of geotechnical, geodetic and informatics experts.