Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering Hicks, Brinkgreve & Rohe (Eds)

2014 Taylor & Francis Group, London, 978-1-138-00146-6

Application of artificial neural network in monitoring seepage flow through

Dadin Kowa dam, Gombe State Nigeria
E.B. Ojo & D.S. Matawal
Nigerian Building & Road Research Institute, Abuja, Nigeria

ABSTRACT: Several numerical models have been developed for seepage analysis in embankment dams.
However, these methods require a specification of the initial and boundary conditions and the spatial distribution
of hydraulic parameters which are not easily measured. Therefore, data modeling tools that are able to capture
and represent complex input/output relationships, such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), are potential tools
for obtaining more accurate results. The principal objective of this study was to train a neural network model to
predict water levels in piezometers in an embankment dam using Dadin Kowa dam in Gombe State, Nigeria as a
case study. A feedforward 3-layer network employing the backpropagation algorithm for network learning was
used. The model results show that predicted water levels compared satisfactorily with those measured on the field.
This study offers insight to the effectiveness of ANNs in monitoring seepage flow through an embankment dam.

INTRODUCTION

Embankment dams are usually designed to allow

steady state seepage through the dam sections. However, when internal erosion occurs, the seepage flow
increases and fines from the core or foundation are
transported away thereby affecting the stability of the
dam. Research has revealed that internal erosion is one
of the prevalent failure modes in embankment dams
(ICOLD, 1995). Dam failures are usually catastrophic
and result in a significant loss of lives and properties.
A seepage monitoring system is therefore a vital
part of an embankment dams monitoring system as
anomalous seepage may pose a threat to the integrity of
the dam and any excessive and unplanned seepage may
lead to the dam failure. Dam safety monitoring is of
prime importance to owners and operators of embankment dams as dams represent large economic values.
From routine inspections, deviations from expected or
predicted seepage flow rates may be indicative of preferential seepage zones or piping through the core or
foundation, which can severely compromise the structural stability of the embankment. The prediction of
infiltration and seepage in time and space and the
consequent seepage path through the dam is important for planning and implementing technically and
economically sound remedial stability measures.
1.1 Seepage flow models
Over the years, physical and mathematical methods
have been used to predict seepage paths. Panthulu et al.
(2001) used geophysical methods to analyse seepage
and a self potential method to delineate seepage paths

for two of the saddle dams of the Som-Kamla-Amba

project in Rajasthan, India. Turkmen et al. (2002)
drilled boreholes and used dye trace tests to identify
the seepage paths in the rockfill Kalecik dam inTurkey.
Because of the complexity of most real seepage problems of interest, approximate solutions are commonly
employed. The most common are numerical methods and graphical solutions. Several numerical models
that provide seepage estimates have been developed
by making use of the finite difference and the finite
element methods, or other numerical modeling tools
(Tayfur et al. (2005), Tien-Kuen (1996), Naouss and
Najar (1996) etc.).
In the finite element method, the flow domain
is subdivided into small elements within which an
approximate form of solution is assumed. Thus, a solution is obtained for each individual element, in which
the constants of the solution are obtained by minimizing the energy dissipation rate, subject to the boundary
conditions and continuity requirements between the
elements (Zienkiewicz and Cheung, 1965). Using the
finite element method (FEM) based on an invariant
mesh technique, Honjo et al. (1995) analyzed seepage
through the saturated-unsaturated zone in the Tarbela
dam in Pakistan. They analyzed various stages of
reservoir filling and depletion and various conditions
of sedimentation in the reservoir. Tien-Kuen (1996)
investigated the stability of an earth dam under steady
state seepage by a FEM. Naouss and Najjar (1996)
developed a finite difference method (FDM) to calculate the piezometer head and seepage velocity at
all nodal locations within a permeable stratum. Solving the inverse problem with a steady state model of
saturated-unsaturated seepage flow in porous media,

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Xu et al. (2003) designed a hydraulically optimal earth

dam cross section.
Generally, numerical methods require a complicated technique for the solution of model equations,
determination of initial and boundary conditions as
well as the spatial distribution of hydraulic parameters.
The complexity of the phenomena governing seepage
through an embankment dam and the lack of information concerning the boundary conditions makes it
very difficult to build a finite element deterministic
model. In practical situations, satisfying all the data
needs of a comprehensive FEM is seldom available
due to time and budgetary constraints. Furthermore,
there is always a problem of convergence and instability in the numerical solution of the highly nonlinear
differential equation of the physics based model. These
factors reduce the accuracy of the model in predicting
seepage flow.
Tayfur et al. (2005) developed a FEM model alongside an Artificial Neural Network model, to predict
seepage path through the body of Jeziorsko dam,
Poland. The piezometer water levels computed by the
models satisfactorily compared with those measured
by the piezometers. However, the model results also
revealed that the ANN model performed as good as
and in some cases better than the FEM model. In recent
time, both in research and practical applications, neural networks have proven to be a very powerful method
of mathematical modeling.
1.2 Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs)
Artificial neural networks are powerful data modeling tools that are able to capture and represent
complex input/output relationships. The motivation
for the development of neural network technology
stemmed from the desire to develop an artificial system that could perform intelligent tasks similar to
those performed by the human brain. The true power
and advantage of neural networks lies in their ability
to represent both linear and non-linear relationships
and in their ability to learn these relationships directly
from the data being modeled. Traditional linear models are simply inadequate when it comes to modeling
data that contains non-linear characteristics.
Over the last few years, the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) has increased in many areas of
Engineering. In particular, ANNs have been applied
to many geotechnical engineering problems and some
degree of success has been recorded. A review of literature reveals thatArtificial Neural Networks have been
recently employed for the solution of many hydraulic,
hydrologic and water resources problems ranging from
rainfall runoff (Tokar and Johnson 1999) to sediment transport (Jain 2001; Nagy et al. 2002) to solute
transport (Aziz and Wong 1992; Lu et al. 1998). In
embankment dams, ANNs have been used to predict
seepage path in a homogenous earthfill dam in Poland
(Tayfur et al. 2005). They have also been used satisfactorily to estimate peak outflow from breached
embankments (Amini et al. 2011; Hoosyaripor and
Tahershamsi 2012).

Figure 1. Dam section showing some of the piezometers.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

2.1 Case study

The Dadin Kowa dam was used as a case study to
carry out this investigation. It is located in NorthEastern Nigeria in Yamaltu-Deba Local Government
in Gombe State. It lies on Lat.N10 18 and Long E
11 31 . The dam is located 5 km north of the village
of Dadin Kowa on River Gongola in Gombe State. Its
major basin is the Benue River basin. It has a capacity of 2 885 000 000 m3 and area 300 000 000 m2 . The
reservoir extends northwards for a distance of 65 km
approximately to where the Borno extension railway
line crosses the Gongola River in Ashaka.
It is a rockfill embankment which consists of a
central core of silty clay, supported upstream and
downstream by rockfill shells in which the maximum aggregate size ranges from 300 to 1200 mm. The
embankment is 42 m high with a length of 520 m and
a base width of 230 m. Figure 1 shows a schematic
representation of a section of the dam.
The transition zone between the core and the shell
consists of 3 m of granular filter formed of a mixture of crushed rock and natural sand as shown. The
embankment is founded on river sand (up to 18.5 m
thick) at the river section, and on bedrock (a sandstone
with occasional mudstone intercalations) at the banks.
The bedrock is overlain by a thick alluvial deposit, up
to 70 m wide along the dam axis, which consists of
medium to coarse sand with discontinuous zones rich
in gravel and/or silt. The river sand which has an in
situ hydraulic conductivity of about 0.00010.1 cm/s
(before densification) attains a maximum thickness
of about 18.5 m along the dam axis (Chido-Amajuoyi
and Ofoegbu, 1987).
2.2 Methodology
To create the network prediction model, the NNTOOL
application in MATLAB was used. Water levels for
twenty-five piezometers in the embankment sections,
the alluvial foundation and the bedrock were collected
from the Dadin Kowa dam from 6 September, 1983
to 21 October, 1998. This much data was required in
order to select the year which contains all the possible variations in water rise in the upper reservoir.
Therefore, water levels from the period of 17 October,
1989 to 10 September, 1990 was selected and used
to calibrate the network as this showed a wider variation in the reservoir level. Similarly, water levels from

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Figure 2. Network topology. X Reservoir water level,

Y Tailwater level, Z Identification of piezometer, O
Piezometer water level.

October 1990 to July, 1991 were used to validate the

model. Piezometers in the embankment sections were
selected based on their location upstream or downstream of the core. Also, piezometers before and after
the slurry cut-off wall in the alluvial foundation and
bedrock were also selected.
In this study, the multi-layer perceptron feed
forward neural network was selected as prediction
model because of its performance in previous studies (Tayfur et al. 2005). Previous studies have shown
that the more neurons in a hidden layer, the more powerful the network, except for purely linear networks.
The network employed for this study had two layers,
with tan-sigmoid transfer function in the hidden layer
and a linear transfer function in the output layer. This
is a useful structure for function approximation problems. Each hidden layer had seven neurons each. The
optimal number of neurons in the hidden layer was
obtained by trial error to avoid underfitting in the case
of too few neurons and overfitting in the case of too
many neurons.
As shown in Figure 2, the network output layer had
a single neuron with the water level in the piezometer
as the output variable. The network had three input
neurons since there were three input variables (the
upstream water elevation, the downstream water elevation and the identification number of a piezometer).
Because, several input vectors were used for training,
the batch training style was used. In this training style,
weights and biases are only updated after all of the
inputs and targets are presented. The scaled conjugate
gradient (trainscg) training algorithm was selected as
it requires no line search and is good general purpose
training algorithm.

3
3.1

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Network learning

The figure below shows the training process with the

performance goal being met at the 4769th epoch.

Figure 3. Training process.

Figure 4. Predicted Water Level against Measured Water

Level during Training.

3.2 Model calibration

Using the reservoir water level, tailwater level and
piezometer identification number as inputs, and the
piezometer water levels as outputs, the neural network
model was calibrated. Measured water levels from
17th October, 1989 to 10th September, 1990 were used
to calibrate the model. To ascertain the performance
of the model, a regression analysis was carried out
between the measured piezometer water levels and the
model predicted water levels.This is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 shows a coefficient of determination (R2 )
is 0.997 indicating a strong correlation between the
measured water levels and predicted water levels. The
slope of the regression line is 0.995 with an intercept
of 1.25.This indicates an overall successful training of
the neural network model.
Figure 5 shows an average R2 value of 0.8 which
also indicates a satisfactory correlation between the
measured water levels and predicted water levels.
However, two piezometers (P38 and P37) had correlation coefficients which were less than 0.5. The
indicates the model did not perform so well in capturing the input-output relationships in these piezometers.
This may be attributed to irregular trend in the water
level variations for these piezometers as observed in
the initial data analysis.

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Figure 5. Correlation Coefficient for Piezometers in the

Training Run.

Figure 7. Correlation Coefficient for Piezometers in the

Validation Run.

Figure 8. Computed MeanAbsolute Errors for Piezometers.

Figure 6. Predicted Water Level against Measured Water

Level during Validation.

3.3

Model validations

The trained neural network model was then tested

by predicting the measured piezometer level for the
period of 8 October, 1990 to 1 July,1991. Figure 6
compares the model-predicted piezometer water level
with the measured water level showing a coefficient
of determination (R2 ) of 0.994, a slope of 0.99 and an
intercept of 2.2 for the regression line. This indicates
satisfactory predictions of the measured water levels
by the ANN.
Figure 7 shows an overall average R2 value of
0.8 which is satisfactory. From the figure, it can be
observed a few piezometers (P57, P38, P37 & P18)
had low R2 values.
These piezometers are located in the core of the
embankment section. A time series plot for these
piezometers revealed patterns which were not similar
to the other piezometers. This may be due to piezometer defects, construction errorrs, etc. Since, the model
performed poorly in the calibration stage, it is only
expected that the performance should also be poor in
the validation stage. Performance of neural networks,
as any data-driven model is extremely sensitive to the
data used during calibration.This suggests that the data
used to train the network was insufficient and therefore incapable of capturing the pattern between the
input and output variables for these piezometers.

The computed Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and

percentage error were computed and are presented in
Figure 8.
The results show that about 60% of the piezometers have a computed mean absolute error of less than
0.5 m. P47 had a computed mean absolute error of
zero.
The result from this study gives more insight for
the potential use of ANNs in monitoring piezometer
water levels in embankment dams. The neural network
model selected for the study satisfactorily captured
the relationship between the reservoir, tailwater levels and the piezometer water levels. However, some
piezometers showed errors as high as 2 m (P29 and
P17). These piezometers however had satisfactory R2
values. Performance of neural networks, as any datadriven model is extremely sensitive to the data used
during calibration. This would suggest that although
the pattern between the input variables was captured
in the training run, such a pattern did not exist in the
data used for the validation test.

CONCLUSION

The following conclusions have been drawn from this

case study:

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Monitoring piezometer water levels in embankment

dams is essential to detect anomalies in seepage
paths which may lead to dam failure.

The field data was used to calibrate and validate the

ANN model. The model performance was evaluated by carrying out a regression analysis on the
predicted model results with the measured water
levels. The coefficient of determination (R2 ) for
the training and validation runs was 0.997 and
0.994 respectively. Similarly, the slope of regression line obtained from the analysis was 0.995 and
0.99 respectively. This suggests that neural network
model selected successfully captured the relationship between the reservoir, tailwater levels and the
piezometer water levels.
Further analysis revealed that although the overall
performance of the model was successful, the model
performed better in some piezometers than others.
The ANN model predicted water levels in the
piezometers using only the reservoir and tailwater
levels which are easily measured field data. It is
therefore a simpler method for monitoring seepage
in embankment dams
This study provides more insight into the excellent
approximating capability of the neural network as it
was used to capture the relationship between upstream
and downstream water levels in an embankment and
water levels in the piezometers. It must be noted however, that the ANN model is a data-driven black box
model which does not reveal any explicit relationship
between input and output variables and hence, does not
provide any useful insight to the solution of the physical problem. In addition, its performance is extremely
sensitive to the data used during testing and calibration. In other words, the model is only as accurate as
the data used in calibration.
Furthermore, the inability of neural networks to
extrapolate beyond the range of data used for training is widely acknowledged. Hence, ANN models are
usually site-specific and can only be used for cases for
which it was trained.
The satisfactory prediction of the piezometer water
levels indicates that the ANN model, if trained with
adequate and sufficient data, can be used to verify the
piezometer water levels in an embankment dam. From
a practical point of view, it could serve as a tool for
the detection of anomalies in the course of infiltrated
water and seepage hence enabling the planning and
implementation of technical and economic remedial
stability measures.
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