This research contributed to the deployment of world’s first wireless sensor network for landslide detection. This research was initially part of WINSOC project, funded by the European Commission under FP6 program. The Government of India plans to deploy this system in all landslide prone areas of India, furthering three projects with DeitY, DST, and MoES.
The project deals with the development of a wireless sensor network for real-time landslide monitoring with pore pressure sensor, moisture sensor, strain gauge, geophone, tilt meter, and rain gauge sensors, along with a large and dense wireless sensor network to provide a comprehensive matrix of geotechnical data from the deployment site.
The system is deployed in a landslide prone area where two major landslides had already occurred. It consists of 80 geological sensors in 20 deep earth probes and the data is collected and transmitted using the overlaid wireless sensor network of 25 nodes. In addition, the project has provided large scale data collection algorithms running in the wireless sensor network, power optimization schemes, scalability for the field deployment, remote network configuration, data fusion for multiple data types, and network heterogeneity. The data is sent via the ZigBee or equivalent wireless sensor network to a network gateway, which sends the data via WiFi to the VSAT network.
This network transmits the data to the Amritapuri Data Analysis Center. There, the risk of landslide is assessed, and remote command and control interface is given to the Wireless Sensor Network Landslide Field Deployment to performance-tune the data collection parameters and provide warnings. The data has been continuously transmitted from the deployment site in real time to the institution since 2008.
“The wireless sensor system developed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and tested successfully at Munnar, Kerala to forecast natural disasters like landslides can be replicated in similar disaster-prone areas elsewhere in the country,” shared Dr. R. Chidambaram, Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India.
