Deformation prediction is an important part of concrete dam safety monitoring. In recent years, the random forest (RF) algorithm has attracted more and more attention in the field of dam safety monitoring because of its fast speed and strong generalization ability. However, the performance of RF is easily affected by many factors, such as the drift of measured value in displacement and the inappropriate setting of parameters of RF. To solve the above problems, the indicator variable model (IVM) is used to identify and eliminate the drift of measured values in this paper, and the sand cat swarm optimization (SCSO) is applied to optimize RF for the first time. On the grounds of this, a deformation prediction system of a concrete dam based on the IVM and RF algorithm optimized by SCSO is proposed. The case study shows that IVM can correct the interference of monitoring data accurately, and the maximum error rate is less than 3%; in the aspect of parameter optimization of RF, the results of the SCSO algorithm are obviously better than those of the TAE method and PSO algorithm, and the corresponding OOB error is the minimum; in terms of prediction performance, compared with TAE-RF, PSO-RF, LSTM and SVM, SCSO-RF has higher accuracy and stronger stability, and its SSE and MSE are reduced by at least 91%, MAE and RMSE are reduced by at least 71%, and R² is very close to 1. The results of study provide a new method for the automatic online evaluation of dam safety performance.

During the operation period, the deformation of an ultra-high arch dam is affected by the large fluctuation of the reservoir water level. Under the dual coupling of the ultra-high dam and the complex water level conditions, the traditional variational analysis method cannot be sufficiently applied to its deformation analysis. The deformation analysis of the ultra-high arch dam, however, is very important in order to judge the dam safety state. To analyze the deformation law of different parts of an ultra-high arch dam, the panel data clustering theory is used to construct a Spatio-temporal characteristic model of dam deformation. In order to solve the difficult problem of the fluctuating displacement of dam deformation with water level effect, three displacement component indexes (absolute quantity, growing, and fluctuation) are proposed to characterize dam deformation. To further optimize the panel clustering deformation model, the objective weight coefficient of clustering comprehensive distance is calculated based on the CRITIC (CRiteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation) method. The zoning rules of the ultra-high arch dam are established by using the idea of the CSP (Constraint Satisfaction Problem) index, and the complex water level of the reservoir is simulated in the whole process. Finally, the dynamic cluster analysis of dam deformation is realized. Through a case study, three typical working conditions including the rapid rise and fall of water level and the normal operation are calculated, and the deformation laws of different deformation zones are analyzed. The results show that the model can reasonably describe the deformation law of an ultra-high arch dam under different water levels, conveniently and intuitively select representative measuring points and key monitoring parts, effectively reducing the analysis workload of lots of measuring points, and improve the reliability of arch dam deformation analysis.

The seepage of the dam is an important representation of the operation characteristics of the dam, and there are many factors affecting the seepage with a certain lag. It is still difficult to predict its change and sensitivity because of complex operating conditions. At present, the lag-sensitivity of influence factors of the dam seepage has not been studied. The time series influence factors of seepage are determined by HTRT (hydrostatic-thermal-rainfall-time) model in this paper. To avoid the pseudo fitting of conventional methods, HTRT model nested random forest algorithm is used to establish the predicting model of the dam seepage. And MIC algorithm is used to achieve the dual purposes of time lag and sensitivity analysis. Firstly, the time lag of relationship between seepage and its influencing factors is characterized, and the most appropriate lag time of the HTRT model factors is determined. Secondly, independent correlation analysis on all influencing factors is carried out and the sensitivity of each factor is analyzed by MIC. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of the factors to seepage is quantitatively analyzed by the two parameters of %IncMSE and IncNodePurity of RF algorithm. The sensitivity of influencing factors is analyzed by comparing MIC results with RF results. Combined with the case, taking the error of fitting prediction as the evaluation index of seepage prediction, the prediction accuracy of MIC-RF model, RF model and MIC-BPNN (Back Propagation neural network) model is calculated and compared. Case study showed that MIC- RF monitoring model has high prediction accuracy, strong adaptability and high robustness in dam seepage, and the sensitivity and time lag of influencing factors can be quantitatively analyzed. The water pressure and rainfall of the lag time are 14 days and 16 days respectively. The sensitivity study of the time series influencing factors of seepage showed that the water pressure component is the main controlling factor of seepage, and rainfall component is more sensitive to later stage. The MIC-RF model can be used as a new dam seepage safety monitoring model.

The system identification of concrete dams using seismic monitoring data can reveal the practical dynamic properties of structures during earthquakes and provide valuable information for the analysis of structural seismic response, finite element model calibration, and the assessment of postearthquake structural damage. In this investigation, seismic monitoring data of the Pacoima arch dam were used to identify the structural modal parameters. The identified modal parameters of the Pacoima arch dam, derived in different previous studies that used forced vibration tests (FVT), numerical calculation, and seismic monitoring, were compared. Meanwhile, different modal identification results using the input-output (IO) methods and the output-only (OO) identification methods as well as the linear time-varying (LTV) modal identification method were adopted to compare the modal identification results. Taking into account the different excitation, seismic input, and modal identification methods, the reasons for the differences among these identification results were analyzed, and some existing problems in the current modal identification of concrete dams are pointed out. These analysis results provide valuable guidance regarding the selection of appropriate identification methods and the evaluation of the system identification results for practical engineering applications.