L- and Corner-arryas for 3D electric resistivity tomography: An alternative for geophysical surveys in urban zones

3D Electric Resitivity Tomography methods carried out on heavily urbanized areas become a difficult task, since buildings, houses or other type of obstacles do not allow parallel ERT arrays to be deployed. Therefore, insufficient information from the subsoil could be obtained. The present paper presents two new techniques, which allow acquiring information beneath a construction by simply surrounding the building or buildings to be studied by a series of ERT profiles. Apparent resistivities are obtained from L-shaped profiles, where alternations between current and potential electrodes along this array are carried out in an automatic way. Four L-arrays and four Corner-arrays are needed to cover the subsurface beneath the studied area. A field test was carried out on a small University of Mexico main Campus garden, where trees and other anthropogenic structures were the so called 'obstacles'. Geophysical work was performed employing parallel arrays (traditional methodology) and compared with this new method presented. Results show that the new method has a poor resolution towards the central portion of the area, mainly from anomalies produced by shallow structures as compared with the traditional grid method. However, the L- and Corner- arrays are more sensitive to anomalies produced by deeper objects, which cannot be observed in the traditional method. The final goal is to apply this method to study habitational complexes built on top of the ancient lake of Mexico City, where buildings are in constant risk due to fracturing and subsidence.