Instrumentation & Monitoring
Continuous real-time monitoring to assure ongoing use of the lock during construction
The Kentucky Lock Addition project was a 110 x 1,200 ft long navigation lock that is located landward and adjacent to the existing 110 x 600 ft lock. Most of the tows using the 600 ft long existing lock are longer than 600 ft. Therefore, they have to perform a time-consuming double lockage, a procedure that takes about three hours. These double lockage’s, along with the high traffic volumes experienced at Kentucky Lock, result in significant and costly delay for commercial vessels.
Thalle Construction, the contractor for the project, retained the services of Geocomp to design and maintain a reliable sensor array to provide continuous real-time information to assure ongoing use of the lock and safety during construction. The various sensors were hard wired to remotely powered and remotely accessed data loggers that continuously monitor sensor response and post data onto Geocomp’s iSiteCentral® server. Data is reviewed in real-time through simple password-protected internet access.