The Dez dam was commissioned in 1963 and since sediments accumulated in the reservoir up to an elevation of approximately 15m below the intake of the power tunnel. One of the possible measures to improve operation of the reservoir is by heightening of the existing dam. This paper describes the conducted procedure for static and thermal calibration of this 203m dam in Iran based on micro geodesies measurements. Also the nonlinear response of existing dam is investigated under maximum credible earthquake ground motions considering joint behavior and mass concrete cracking and safety of dam is evaluated for possible heightening. For thermal calibration of provided numerical model, transient thermal analysis was conducted and results were compared with thermometers records installed in central block. In addition, for static calibration; thermal distribution within dam body, dam self weight, hydrostatic pressure and silt load applied on the 3D fi nite element model of dam-reservoir-foundation were considered. Results show that the distribution of stresses will be critical within dam for heightening case under seismic loads in MCL.