DMRC to adopt real-time technology to monitor buildings amid tunnel work
The RK Ashram Marg and Janakpuri West corridor will have three underground Metro stations — Derawal Nagar, Ghanta Ghar, and Pulbangash.
In a bid to ensure that century-old structures in congested areas of central Delhi remain unaffected during the metro tunneling work for the RK Ashram Marg and Janakpuri West under phase IV, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation will introduce a real-time web-based monitoring mechanism for supervising the buildings’ condition.
Under the said corridor, there will be three underground metro stations — Derawal Nagar, Ghanta Ghar, and Pulbangash, a DMRC official said, adding that these are extremely congested areas with several old and dilapidated buildings.
The real-time monitoring of these areas will be carried out from eight different locations. “These eight locations are spread across Derawal Nagar, Ghanta Ghar, Nabi Karim, Pulbangash, and Sadar Bazar. The web-based mechanism is a major step forward towards ensuring safe construction of the tunneling work on this stretch,” the official said, asking not to be named.
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The tunneling work on the stretch is likely to start in June, officials said.
“DMRC will monitor the condition of these structures continuously once the tunnelling work commences. We have in the past carried out construction in similarly difficult areas with success in old Delhi for the violet and yellow metro lines with round-the-clock monitoring,” the official cited above said.
However, unlike the previous operations, the new monitoring system is fully digitised and will be done real-time.
“Real-time monitoring will be done through gadgets such as Automatic Total Stations(ATS), vibration sensors, tilt metres, and load cells which are capable of capturing and transmitting real-time data to a central data acquisition system which keeps on processing the same and transmitting the desired report to all stakeholders through tex messages and email,” the DMRC official said.
ATS determines the position of monitoring points by measuring horizontal and vertical angles and the distance between the instrument and the target points.
The agency also plans to use advanced Beam system (Bore Tunnelling Electrical Ahead Monitoring) to its tunnel boring machines (TBM).
“The system enables TBM to work as a real-time probe for predicting the geological structures up to 20m ahead of the machine’s cutter head face and predict any unexpected encounter with filled wells, cavities, and aquifers that may lead to settlement over the ground,” the official said.
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DMRC is constructing new underground corridors around 28km-long as part of its Phase IV expansion, under which 65km of new lines are being laid across three different corridors.
“This will be a major engineering challenge since the underground corridors are going to pass through a variety of areas such as crowded residential as well as commercial areas in Sadar Bazar, Nabi Karim and the southern ridge on the Mehrauli Badarpur road. So far, we have completed 2.2km of underground tunnels between Janakpuri West and Krishna Park Extension on the Janakpuri West – RK Ashram Marg corridor,” the DMRC official added.