The results of fifty years monitoring of the strain dynamics of the fault crossing the large Engury Dam Foundation

Abstract

The high Enguri arch dam (271 m) was erected in the 1970s in the canyon of the river Enguri. The dam area is a zone of high seismicity with the moment magnitude Mw = 8. It is close (several hundred meters) to the large Ingirishi active fault (Figure 1). The high seismic and geodynamical activities together with the dense population downstream of the dam made the Enguri dam with its one billion cubic meters water reservoir a potential source of a major catastrophe in Georgia. In turn, this means that the dam should be under permanent monitoring. Accordingly, this problem is the object of research of the M. Nodia Institute of Geophysics and European Specialized Centre “Geodynamical Hazards of High Dam” of the European-Mediterranean Open Partial Agreement on Major Disasters, organized in 1996 by the Council of Europe.