Thames Tideway Tunnel (East), London

Thames Tideway Tunnel

London relies on a 150-year-old sewer system built for a population less than half its current size.

As a result, millions of tonnes of raw sewage spill, untreated, into the River Thames each year. Tideway is the company building the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a 25km ‘Super Sewer’ running under the Thames designed to clean up the river for the good of the city and its wildlife. To monitor the impact of construction, CVB chose ATLAS InSAR data, as it enables the monitoring of large areas with a significant point density at millimetric precision.

Control of the impact of the work

• The Altas InSAR monitoring solution was successfully implemented in the Thames Tideway East section for CVB JV over a four-year period, from January 2014 to December 2017. The system proved to be an efficient and cost-effective solution for long-term monitoring of construction activities and their impact on the surrounding built environment.
• The baseline study was generated using 83 high-resolution TerraSAR-X satellite images acquired in descending orbit mode, producing up to 147,126 measurement points across the monitored area. During the construction phase, monitoring results were updated on a monthly basis.
• Results were delivered through the Beyond Monitoring web-based platform, which enables the integration of Altas InSAR data with traditional ground-based monitoring methods for a comprehensive analysis of structural and ground movement.