Publications

Abstract : Landslides are the third largest disasters worldwide. In order to save innocent lives and property damage, a system for understanding, assessment and early warning of the landslides is highly necessary. In this work, we have designed and developed an integrated wireless sensor network system for real-time monitoring and early warning of landslides. This paper will discuss the detailed requirements and design criteria considered in the design and development of the Intelligent Wireless Probe (IWP), to capture the relevant landslide triggering parameters. The network of IWPs is used to derive the local or regional contribution of geological, hydrological, and meteorological factors towards the initiation of a potentially imminent landslide. This heterogeneous sensor system provides the capability for gathering real-time context aware data to understand the dynamic variability in landslide risk. The data from these systems are continuously transmitted to our control center for real-time data analysis to derive the possibility of an imminent landslide. Based on the knowledge discovery from these analyses a three level warning system was developed to issue real-time landslide warnings. We have deployed the complete system in Western Ghats and North Eastern Himalayas in India. The system in Munnar has proven its validity by delivering real time warnings to the community in 2009, 2011, and 2013 and continues to monitor landslides even today for the tenth year in a row. The results from the experimentation shows this system has contributed in enhancing the reliability of landslide warning, reduced false alarm rate, and provides the capability to issue warnings in local, slope and regional levels. After the success of this work, Government of India has adopted the system nationally as a result of which we have carried out a second deployment in the North Eastern Himalayas.