With input from senior company executives, CEO Greg Bentley and CTO Keith Bentley selected projects from more than 300 nominations submitted for Bentley Systems 2023 Going Digital Awards in infrastructure programme.
Yuba Water Agency from Camptonville, California, US was selected for its new Bullards bar dam as part of the Yuba river development project to reduce flood risk, generate clean hydropower, and ensure reliable water supply for Yuba county.
Yuba Water Agency initiated a modernisation of the dam monitoring system, replacing a hazardous legacy system and manual inspections. The new system optimises dam operations, preventing loss of life and billions of dollars of damage in northern Sacramento Valley. Faced with steep terrain and site challenges, Yuba Water needed to remotely survey and monitor the dam.
They selected iTwin capture modeller to generate a 3D reality mesh from thousands of drone-captured images and uploaded the mesh to the iTwin platform, creating a digital twin. The digital twin is said to remotely captures sensor data from monitoring devices and performs real-time digital crack detection, enabling visualisation into the structural integrity of the dam. Compared to the conventional monitoring system, the automated digital station reportedly provides 1,000 times more data monitoring points and has improved data accuracy by 50% and risk assessment by 100%.
