Monitoring Horizontal Displacements in Landfills Using Instrumentation and Geostatistics

Geotechnical monitoring encompasses the inspection of vertical and horizontal displacements, pore pressures, shear resistance, leachate, and gas flows. Moreover, the monitoring includes visual inspections, ensuring environmental preservation and the safety of the landfill site. Accordingly, this research aims to evaluate and spatialize the magnitude of horizontal displacements over a period of 1 year in a landfill located at Fazenda Logradouro II, district of Catolé de Boa Vista, in the municipality of Campina Grande, state of Paraíba - Brazil. The horizontal displacements were monitored with surface markers through weekly measurements conducted with a total station. After calculating the displacements, spatialization was performed using geostatistics with heat maps (Kernel density estimation), and the computed data was verified against literature data. The results indicated that cumulative horizontal displacements, horizontal displacement speed, and actual displacements are smaller than the values reported in the literature. The spatialization of displacement data using geostatistics has proven to be effective in better visualizing the distribution of displacements in regions of the sanitary massif. The displacement data do not behave uniformly due to waste heterogeneity and other operational factors such as compaction and the execution of the cover soil layer. Thus, geostatistical analysis can be considered as a technique that can help predict and manage these displacements, improving the stability and useful life of the landfill.