Providing digital monitoring and surveying to inform remediation of 200-year-old man-made walls

New Cut - River Wall Stabilisation Works

With 3 kilometres (1.86 miles) of man-made walls, Bristol’s Floating Harbour is an iconic part of the cityscape. Referred to as the New Cut, it was originally engineered in the early 1800s. The tidal River Avon was re-routed, and with the removal of 600,000 cubic metres (21,188,800 cubic feet) of earth and rock, an artificial channel was created to take the river to the sea.

The Avon’s confluence with the hyper-tidal Severn estuary, which has the second highest tidal range in the world, means the tidal flow causes riverbank scour, impacting the river training walls. Bristol City Council has invested in a scheme to identify the issues and instigate repairs to make sure adjacent roads, bridges and pathways remain safe, and the visual experience of the harbour is maintained for everyone to enjoy.

Our Ground Engineering, Structural Engineering, Flood Management, and Utilities teams worked on a solution, supported by the application of our digital technologies. Using ArcGIS Pro geospatial software, we processed drone and terrestrial surveys to generate millions of data points to build a 3D picture of the New Cut. This provides the project team with measurements to influence the design repair work that would otherwise be hard to achieve manually.

Our Environmental Monitoring team has deployed 60 tilt meters at strategic points on the harbourside. This allows the walls to be monitored remotely during the repair work. If the walls rotate beyond a certain angle, the monitors react and send a warning. This lets the construction team mitigate any risks during the repair process. The sensitivity of the tilt monitors is such that they can detect the effect of high- and low-tides on the river walls.

This stabilisation work along the harborside is helping retain the historic character of the walls and the city providing safe passage around this landmark for the community.