A 4 km combined seismic and electric streamer survey along an embankment of the Po river

Geotechnical characterization surveys of river embankments are usually very time and cost consuming, non-invasive geophysical investigations may be considered as a valuable alternative to the standard geotechnical characterization given their surveying speed and their depth and length of investigation. Particularly, new acquisition approaches with the use of appropriate streamer cables could strongly reduce the acquisition times making geophysical surveys ideal for a preliminary screening of these structures. Specifically, resistivity and seismic methods can be adopted given that these two methodologies could offer complementary information with respect to the pore fluid properties (resistivity methods) and the solid skeleton characteristics (seismic methods). Few examples of combined seismic and electric streamers systems were already proposed in the literature but their applicability for long and extensive surveys still need to be completely demonstrated. In this paper a case study of a 4 km combined seismic and electric streamer survey along the embankment of the Po river in Crescentino is reported. Data acquisition strategies are discussed and preliminary data analyses are reported. The results of the survey demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed acquisition system and its potentiality as a screening tool for fast and reliable characterization of river embankments.