WINSOC Research Team in Amrita
June 11, 2009
School of Engineering, Amritapuri
Members of the international WINSOC research team arrived in India for a visit to the deployment site at Munnar of the landslide detection system developed by Amrita University faculty and research associates. Visiting delegates are from premier European organizations and universities such as Selex Communications, DUNE srl (Italy), University of Rome 'La Sapienza' (Italy), Technical University of Catalonia (Spain), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (Switzerland) and Czech Centre for Science Society (Czech Republic). Amrita and these institutions are partners in 11-member consortium working on this 2.5 million Euro research project co-funded by the INFSO DG of the European Commission.
"Amrita University and Antrix (the commercial arm of ISRO) are the only Indian partners in this consortium that represents 8 different countries," stated Dr. Venkat Rangan, Vice-Chancellor of Amrita University. "WINSOC is short for Wireless Sensor Network with Self Organization Capabilities. Built in a way that much resembles biological systems, such that failure of a single node doesn't disable the entire system, the networks are deployed for critical and emergency applications. At Amrita, we are testing the use of this network for successfully predicting landslides before they happen. We have developed and deployed India's first ever wireless sensor network system for landslide detection at Munnar, Idukki in the state of Kerala in India."
Anthoniar Colony in Munnar experienced major landslides in recent years. In July 2005, 8 people lost their lives due to a rainfall-induced landslide. Even today, the risk of yet another landslide remains high. There are long cracks visible even in the dry season, and there is evidence of seepage flow. In March 2008, the Amrita team deployed a pilot of the landslide detection system, followed by an expanded setup in June 2009. There are 50 geological sensors that monitor moisture content, pore pressure and terrain movement. Approximately 20 wireless sensor nodes collect and collaboratively process measurements from the field before forwarding them to the data analysis station located at Amrita University's Amritapuri campus.
"The data from the wireless sensor network is transmitted over a satellite network," shared Maneesha Ramesh, who is spearheading Amrita's participation in the research effort. "Our data analysis center at Amritapuri executes computationally-intensive algorithms on landslide modeling, parameter identification and analysis of various types of sensor data. Within another three months, we expect to have 150 geological sensors and approximately 25 wireless sensor nodes, thanks to funding made available by the Department of Information Technology, India. Many research groups around the world working in allied technologies are keenly following the progress of this research work. We have published eight research papers in international journals of repute."
In addition to journal publications, the work has also been prominently featured in the news media including newspapers and websites. WINSOC Project Advances Wireless Sensor Networks -- this article was published in V1 and GeoConnexion Magazines. The Telegraph, an Indian newspaper, ran a feature story titled Early Warning System. "Our ultimate goal is to develop a general purpose sensor network with distributed processing capabilities that can be used not only for landslide detection but also other critical applications such as detection of gas leakages and forest fires," further stated Maneesha Ramesh. "We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Revenue Department of the Government of Kerala and the KDH Management for allowing the use of their land for this research work."