the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 03 Mar 2026
Dataset of a 4 km combined seismic and electric streamer survey along the embankment of the Po river in Crescentino
Abstract. For river embankment characterization non-invasive geophysical investigations are a valuable complementary tool to standard geotechnical testing. To this aim, resistivity and seismic methods are often adopted and can offer complementary information with respect to pore fluid properties and solid skeleton characteristics, respectively. The use of streamer cables for these surveys can reduce the acquisition times, making geophysical investigations ideal for preliminary screening. Few examples of combined seismic and electric streamer systems were already proposed in the literature, but their applicability for long and extensive surveys still need to be demonstrated. Moreover, tailored processing and interpretation methods are necessary given the large amount of data collected with such systems, which can be challenging for standard processing and inversion software.
We present a dataset of a 4 km combined seismic and electric streamer survey acquired along the embankment of the Po River in Crescentino, near Torino, in north-west Italy. Data acquisition strategies are discussed and preliminary data analyses are reported. The survey demonstrated the efficiency and potentiality of combined seismic and electric streamer systems in investigating river embankments. All the acquired geophysical data, together with complementary geotechnical and topographic information, are made available in a structured dataset (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18183049). The presented dataset can be an ideal playground to test and benchmark alternative processing and interpretation approaches, and enable an advancement in the state-of-the-art of these characterization methodologies.
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Status: open (until 19 Jun 2026)
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RC1: 'Comment on essd-2026-32', Anonymous Referee #1, 09 Apr 2026
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Cesare Comina, 24 Apr 2026
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Thank you for the fruitful review of our paper, in the attached file we provide an answer to your observations with indication of the modifications performed in the paper.
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AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Cesare Comina, 24 Apr 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on essd-2026-32', Anonymous Referee #2, 26 May 2026
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I appreciate this work and I think a lot of thought has gone behind instrumentation, field set-up and acquisition procedures. However, I am just not sure if this work fits the scope of the journal. The authors are trying to highlight the dataset and its potential usefulness. However, I don't know if this solitary dataset is comprehensive enough. I would normally expect a collection of repeated surveys of this kind at different times of year, reflective of different temperature/precipitation/river level conditions. These variables would all influence your results and strengthen the value of your dataset. Furthermore, different types of engineered embankments could be included to show a range of ground conditions.
For these reasons I personally don't think the value of this work lies with the originality of the dataset. This work should be reframed and resubmitted, as it would be best presented as a research article where the innovative aspect of this method of acquisition, together with in-depth methods of processing and visualisation of such surveys are discussed (rather than leaving it at a "preliminary" stage).
I also have a concern regarding the use of embankment topography/geometry for inversion. I think this is paramount to obtain a representative result. I am not sure the authors have done this, and I think it needs further discussion in text.
I will detail line specific comments below.
L19: Preliminary screening of what? Please be clear for the readers.
L23: When you say “systems” I assume you mean long linear assets such as river levees.
L50: I think you need some references that build up to this statement, i.e. other cases where geophysical surveys inform geotechnical testing.
L54: I think you need a few references here to back up “have been the most adopted”.
L55: Complementary to what? Please be clear for the readers.
L59: Correlations or through petrophysical relationships?
L61: I think you need a reference here.
L63: Again, preliminary screening of what? Please be clear for the readers.
L64: Could you perhaps list the environments of these case studies to give the reader an understanding of where seismic streamers can be used?
L77: Do you mean EMI – Electromagnetic Induction? If you say EM that implies a wider range of geophysical methods, which could include EMI, TEM, GPR, AMT.
L78: “comparable detail” is a vague term.
L83: Criticality?
L84: interpretations usually relies
L91: i) What kind of limitations? ii) Reference to the software?
L92: Remove entire sentence.
L93: The amount of data acquired with a streamer system requires…
L98: …synthetic data and on a few experimental datasets.
L104: I don’t understand what you mean by: “through specific inversion problem solution”. Do you mean parameters obtained as a result of inversion?
L107: Besides…
L110: Even though these methods…
L136: Delete “nearer to Crescentino village”
L138: Delete “on purpose”
Figure 1 caption: i) Replace “evidence” with “symbols indicating the location”. ii) The position of the sections reported in Figure 2 is shown in red.
L149: Capital G.
L151: Replace “whose principal elements are” with “with the following principal elements”
L152: …from its surroundings: mainly …
L166: Delete “attended”
L169: …embankment. For the location…
L181: …in correspondence to…
L185: …than the finer and looser eastern portion…
L202: …could be very useful to benchmark…
L235: …were acquired along the…
L239: …constituted of…
L241: For the acquisition of electrical…
L242: …and is constituted of…
L246: Stainless steel brush electrodes were used…
L248: A drip irrigation system is used alongside the brush electrodes to reduce contact resistance.
L260: Seismic-electric or seismo-electric? Please decide and be consistent throughout the manuscript.
L261: schematic of the streamer with the geophones and electrodes disposition
L279: Delete “obtainable”
L282: …the allow the delineation of lateral…
L288: The acquisition sequence used…
L289: Do you mean self potential or resistance readings or voltage readings - electric potential difference ?
L296: Delete “”
L297: …consecutive electrical resistivity acquisition sequences…
L312: Delete sentence
L316: b) 4m and c) 8m
L325: “as acquired during our survey.”
L329: Please specify the amount of time.
L357: It is electrical resistivity, not electric resistivity. Please replace where needed in the manuscript.
L360: What are gap-fillers? Can you please be specific or rephrase.
L362: What happens when you don’t have a water source nearby?
L379: … with different interpretation approaches…
L381: What does this mean? Are you saying that this analysis is available upon request?
L395: worsens
L406: corresponds
Section 4.2: What about contact resistance data?
L413: … this resulted…
L416: ResIPy
L422: transforming
L429: i) how is the embankment depth estimated? ii) …is superimposed over …
Figure 11: i) Are the blue crosses results from the DPSH test? This is not specified in the caption. Also, how do I know the number of blows for each depth if there is no axis for that?
- ii) These results show no topography variations. Was topography used in the inversion? As you say, the embankment is not straight, so this must be a 2D projection. Could you elaborate the projection process? Do you think this projection might have distorted some features?
L437: …that there is…
L453: Could you indicate the areas mentioned?
L460: I disagree; inversion set-up is not immediate. Did you use use topography from the UAV dataset for this? This would have added time to your processing.
L483: What do you mean by progressive? Please consider rephrasing.
L501: Perhaps showing a mesh used for this inversion would help understand what you mean by 3D. Have you incorporated the embankment's geometry?
L505: I notice a distinct resistivity area 2500-2900 (below -2m depth) in Fig13 b. Are you saying that the 2D inversion was overestimating this resistivity value?
Section 5: Joint inversions (seismic and electrical data) are possible, please suggest that in text.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-32-RC2
Data sets
Dataset of a 4 km combined seismic and electric streamer survey along the embankment of the Po river in Crescentino C. Comina et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18183049
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- 1
General comments
Interesting and original dataset produced with a promising land streamer prototype for rapid combined acquisitions of ERT and MASW data.
The data cover a 4km case study along a Po river earth levee.
The acquisition methodology and the geophysical dataset are well documented. An example of a very preliminary analysis of these data is also included.
Very useful dataset made available to the scientific community for evaluating the methodology and for developing and testing customized analysis procedures or data processing techniques.
Specific comments
Geophysical data are sensitive to meteorological conditions. And the state of the levee is affected by rainfalls.
I did not find any indication about the weather conditions during the week of the survey activities.
I suggest to include the meteorological data (temperatures and rainfalls) from one month before the date of the survey to the last day of the survey using the meteo stations closer to the survey area.
Introduction
Lines 87-89
I suggest moving the reference to Arosio et al. 2017 into the group of references concerning the detection of seepages and leakage problems since this work shows nice examples of this ERT application, while I suggest the following reference from the same research team for the group about ERT use for monitoring water saturation, since this work provides a better description of the prototype monitoring system named GRETA specifically designed for that.
Tresoldi, G., Hojat, A., Zanzi, L., 2020, G.RE.T.A. installations for real-time monitoring of irrigation dams and canals, Procedia Environmental Science, Engineering and Management 7 (2) 271-276.
Line 116
There is a more recent and mature work from Hojat about how to deal with 3D effects produced by the levee geometry. I suggest citing this in substitution of Hojat et al. 2019, which is older and an expanded abstract rather than a journal paper.
Hojat, A., 2024. An iterative 3D correction plus 2D inversion procedure to remove 3D effects from 2D ERT data along embankments, Sensors, 24(12), 3759, doi: doi.org/10.3390/s24123759.
Section 2
Figure 1
A scale might be useful. Or indicate the length of the yellow line (4km?).
Section 3.1
Figure 7
I presume that inverted resistivities are shown in these images but I suggest to specify it in the caption and/or in the text.
Lines 309-312
This statement should be expanded and better described. The point is not very clear.
Section 4.1
Figure 10
Black dots are too big and they hide the color of the pixel. I suggest using either smaller symbols or circles rather than black filled circles.
Technical corrections
Section 2
Correct the title “…..TOPORAPHIC…”
Section 2.1
Figure 3
Eastern and western attributes in the caption are probably inverted.
Section 3.1
Figure 8
Western and Eastern indications are probably inverted both in figure caption and text (Line 332).
Line 315
I suggest changing “above number 49” into “beyond 49 m from the source”.
References
The alphabetical order has to be checked. Some papers at the beginning of the list should be moved down after the works from authors with names starting with “A”.
The position of the publication year is not homogeneous: sometimes after the author list, sometimes at the end or elsewhere.
References to Borgatti et al. 2017 and to Busato et al. 2016 are duplicated.
The reference to Al-Fares 2014 is missing in the reference list.
The reference to the Brodic et al. paper (2015) is missing in the manuscript text.