The primary purpose of the Diamond Valley Lake monitoring system is to detect
deformation of the three earthen dams that may lead to structural instability and possible
catastrophic failure and to automatically alert operators in the event that motions exceed a
user specified distance tolerance in any of three orthogonal components (North, East, and
Up). These motions may range from nearly-instantaneous displacements that may
accompany a large seismic event, for example, to long-term secular trends such as creep.
Furthermore, the GPS sites provides a continuous reference grid for an automatic (but not
continuous) monitoring of many other points on the dam surfaces using an
electromagnetic distance measurement system