Diamer Bhasha Dam, Pakistan

Soil Instruments provided instrumentation at the site of the proposed 4800 megawatt upcoming Dam, the Diamer Bhasha Dam, the world’s third highest RCC Dam located on the Indus River in Pakistan. (31)

Agriculture is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy. Pakistan today is one of the world’s fastest growing populations, now estimated at over 150 million. Due to lack of large river regulation capability through sizeable storage, the country is already facing serious shortages in grain. If this is to continue Pakistan could become a food deficit country in the near future. There is a dire need therefore to build storage for augmenting agriculture production.

The Diamer Bhasha Dam project is located on the Indus River. The proposed Dam would have a maximum height of 272 metres and impound a reservoir of about 8.1 MAF, with live storage of more than 6.4 MAF. Mean annual discharge of Indus River at the site is 50 MAF, thus the Dam will impound 15% of the annual river flow. The Dam project would cover an area of 110 km2 and extend 100 km upstream of the Dam site up to Raikot Bridge on Karakoram Highway (KKH).

To monitor slope stability due to the height of the project, Soil Instruments supplied an inclinometer system with EC casing. With one hole around 290 metres deep, the system was possibly the deepest inclinometer installation anywhere in the world. In addition to the inclinometer system, Soil Instruments also supplied In-Site data presentation software so that the resulting data could be sent to the consultant for interpretation. (226)