Real-Time Monitoring of a Damaged Quayside in Hamburg

At Hywax’s production site in the Port of Hamburg, a major crack had formed in a critical quay structure, raising concerns about potential deformation and the risk of the quay sliding into the water. As the quay is essential to daily operations, ensuring its stability was vital to prevent costly downtime and safety risks.

To stabilise the structure, Hywax reinforced the quayside with rubble stones and implemented monitoring to gain near real-time insight into structural behaviour and receive early warnings of unwanted movement.

The Challenge

The quay showed signs of progressive deformation, requiring close observation across multiple dimensions:

• Horizontal movement toward the water

• Vertical settlement

• Crack propagation

• Interaction with nearby buildings

Traditional monitoring was already in place, including:

• Tilt meters to track inclination

• Fortnightly tachymeter surveys for displacement validation

• LVDT crack sensors and laser-distance meters

While accurate, these methods provided fragmented data with limited temporal resolution — making it difficult to pinpoint events, distinguish tidal effects, or detect sudden movements in real time.

Hywax needed a solution that could deliver continuous displacement insights, reduce reliance on periodic site visits, and provide immediate alerts when conditions changed.

The Solution

TotaLite was deployed alongside existing instrumentation to provide continuous, image-based displacement monitoring.

The setup included:

• A TotaLite sensor installed along the quay to track horizontal movement into the water and settlement

• Fixed reference points to ensure measurement stability

• Monitoring of the adjacent building to understand interaction between structures

• A second TotaLite installed on the building to continuously track crack width, validating results against conventional crack sensors

This configuration enabled near real-time visibility into both structural movement and crack evolution, complementing tilt meters and manual surveys with automated 2D displacement data.

The Results

Tidal Movement Quantified
TotaLite revealed several millimetres of horizontal quay movement driven by tidal cycles, previously indicated by tilt meters but now quantified as true displacement.

Critical Event Detection

On December 18, 2023, TotaLite detected several centimetres of movement following a flooding event. While tilt meters and manual surveys confirmed this trend, only TotaLite captured the precise timing and magnitude, separating tidal effects from actual deformation.

Crack Monitoring Validation

TotaLite’s crack measurements closely matched laser-distance readings, providing scalable crack monitoring without the invasiveness or cost of deploying multiple LVDTs.

Conclusion

TotaLite delivered continuous, real-time insights into quay stability at Hywax, combining the strengths of tilt meters (continuous data) with the spatial displacement accuracy of manual total station surveys.

By providing automated alerts and high-frequency measurements, TotaLite enabled faster response, clearer risk assessment, and more informed decision-making, all while reducing operational overhead.

The result: a cost-effective, future-ready monitoring approach that helped Hywax safeguard critical port infrastructure with confidence.