An Investigation into the Stability of some selected Geodetic Controls in Lagos State of Nigeria using the Strain Analysis Technique

Natural disasters pose global challenges and can result in social, economic, and environmental damage, substantial loss of life, and even pose a threat to geopolitical stability. The study of such disasters through deformation modeling and analyses has found application in the disciplines of Geodesy and Geodynamics. The strain method has in fact been used to model deformation. The strain deformation parameters, namely, dilatancy, total shear strain and differential rotation, of this finite elemental model were calculated by using the baseline ratios of the coordinates of a classical traverse observed using the Global Positioning System (space technique), in the Minna datum platform. Computation was undertaken in a MATLAB programme and a MONTE CARLO environment, after the ill-conditioned triangles in the network were excluded. Statistical analysis was used to determine the significance levels of the respective deformation parameters at the 95%, 97.5% and 99.5% confidence intervals. After the statistical testing of the deformation parameters, it was observed that some of the controls were unstable in terms of their computed dilatancy and their total shear strain values. For the differential rotation of the network, the significance levels at the 95%, 97.5% and 99.5% confidence intervals were found to be 1.8743908, 0.9651796 and 0.4338522, respectively, while, on the other hand, the controls or centroids that did not respond to the network rotation had a mean value of approximately -0.99999.The minimal and maximal principal strain levels occurring at Centroids 11 and 36 with their triangulated station identities were found to be (36-12, 30-84, 43-34A) and (34-30A, 34-32A, 34-36A), respectively. The method adopted for this research proved to be very effective for a deformation study and analysis.